Finished: The Road (McCarthy). A bleak book about a father and young son trying to survive in the post-apocalyptic world. The father and son just go by "the man" and "the boy", and they are a couple of the lone survivors of some event that appeared to wipe out most of civilization. The boy was actually born right about the time it happened, so sadly, this is the only life and world he's ever known....one covered in gray ash...that rains gray ash, whose rivers are gray ash. The man and the boy travel down the road with their few possessions, trying to make it south towards the ocean since they are freezing where they are. They are constantly afraid of gangs of other survivors who have taken to enslaving people and/or eating them! The man spends the entire time coughing up blood, so you know that he probably will not survive to the end of the book. The boy has a goodness in him that comes with the innocence of youth. He wants to help every person they see when they are starving themselves. Eventually they make it to the coast, but the ocean isn't blue like the boy had hoped. The father doesn't survive much longer, but he tells the boy he must go on and try to find "the good guys" and keep "carrying the fire". After his father dies, a man who appears to be one of the good guys comes to take the boy to go with his wife, his son and his daughter. That's where the book ends. No message of hope or anything in this book. Nope...just a few hundred pages of desolation, despair, lost dreams, and oh yeah, the mother who commits suicide early on (before the story begins) because she can't handle things. The Road is a Pulitzer Prize winning book, and it's true that I couldn't put it down. I just had a glimmer of hope that things might get better. It's pretty scary to read in detail how things could be if most of the human population were obliterated. ok, on to a happier book next I hope!

Finished: Troilus and Criseyde (Chaucer) Sad tale, beautiful writing! Chaucer wrote one of my favorite poems, Merciless Beaute, so it stands to reason that I would love, love, love his writing of Troilus and Criseyde! Written as a long poem, it is amazing how Chaucer can keep the line rhythm and rhyming words going without becoming boring or stale, and with such a wit too! And, throughout the book there were little one-liner gems that I just loved...like, when Pandarus warns Criseyde not to underestimate her wise old father:

"The wisdom of your father is admitted,
The wise may be outrun, but not outwitted".

But, alas...I get ahead of myself! To keep it simple, Troilus and Criseyde is an ill-fated love story. Troilus is the son of the King of Troy. The Trojans are in the middle of their battle with the Greeks. The Trojan prophet, Calkas, decides to switch sides and goes to offer his services to the Greeks. He leaves behind his beautiful daughter, Criseyde. Troilus is a popular, intense warrior, second only to his famous brother Hector. He usually chides his men when they fall in love and thinks they should concentrate all their efforts on winning the war. That is...until he spies Criseyde! Troilus falls instantly and passionately in love and cannot be consoled back into "normal" behavior until his trusted friend, Pandarus, who just so happens to also be Criseyde's uncle, goes to plead his case to Criseyde. At first she is reluctant to take Troilus' proclamation of love seriously, thinking he's probably just out to conquer her and leave her. But, his lamentations in a letter convince her he is sincere and so they meet. It is about a third of the way through the book before they meet one another and declare their love. Once they do...they are inseparable, and there are many, many verses expounding on their love and passion for each other. However....for a reason that's not really ever explained, their relationship must remain a secret. I didn't really understand why they couldn't just get married. After all...his brother Paris had gone over and snatched Helen and began the war!! Oh well.

Just as they are a few months into their lovely bliss, Calkas decides he'd like to have his daughter there with him in Greece. He has "foreseen" that Troy will be destroyed by the Greeks, and so begs the Greek nobility to trade a captured Trojan knight for his daughter. The King of Troy agrees to the trade, not knowing he will be sending away the love of his son's life. Troilus vows that he will die without Criseyde and they spend one last night together. He wants to take her and run away. She, however, convinces Troilus to let her go. She says she'll be able to convince her father, with trickery, to let her come back to Troy. She promises she'll be back in ten days. Of course....on the tenth day Troilus waits by the gates in lovesick forlornness, and she never comes. Criseyde had been unable to fool her father in any way, and besides....a Greek warrior named Diomede has been pleading his own love to her night and day until she finally gives in!! She laments for a brief moment about betraying her love to Troilus, but then she gives in and falls in love with Diomede. She even ::::gasp:::: gives Diomede the broach that Troilus had given her as a reminder of his love on the last night they spent together.

After a few months, and many letters to Criseyde, Troilus still holds out hope that she loves him. When his men drag in the armor of the Greek warrior Diomede, though, and Troilus spies the very broach he gave to Criseyde pinned to the armor for good luck, Troilus finally realizes that Criseyde has betrayed his love. And, rather than die on the spot as his weeping soul would have him do..he turns his despair into anger and valiantly steams ahead on the battle field killing many Greeks. He's actually looking for Diomede and wants him to die at his hand. And, even though they meet in battle a few times, Fortune never allows for either to kill the other. Troilus does die in battle at the hands of Achilles though. And, as his spirit goes up to heaven, he looks back on earth and realizes that all the material gain and earthly feelings and thoughts were nothing compared to the delight of heaven!

Though I'd be typing all day if I tried to write down all the passages I liked, here's a sample of one in particular. :-)

This is part of the initial letter that Troilus writes to Criseyde:

He called her his true lady, life and joy,
His sorrow's cure, his bliss, his heart's desire.
And all the other phrases they employ,
These lovers, as their cases may require;
Humbly at first he wrote, and, taking fire,
He tried to earn his way into her grace;
To tell it all would ask no little space.

And next he begged her with all lowliness,
Because he wrote in madness, not to chide
The audacity; he wrote under duress;
Love made him do it, or he would have died;
He begged her piteously to take his side,
And after that he said (and lied like thunder)
He was worth nothing, he was no great wonder,

And he must make allowance for his skill,
Which was but little; and he feared her so,
And argued  his unworthiness until
He turned from that to dwell upon his woe,
But that was endless, it would never go;
His truth was sworn to her and he would hold it.
He read it over and began to fold it.

And as he did his tears fell salt and wet
Upon the ruby signet which he wore;
He set it neatly to the wax, and yet
He kissed the letter a thousand times before
He made an end, and, folding it once more,
Said 'Letter, what a blissful destiny
Awaits thee now, since she will look on thee!'

Finished: Emma (Austen) A wonderful book where the assumptions are delightful and the revelations more so. :-) I love Jane Austen books and Emma was no exception. Emma, the 21 year old, independent, witty, match-making heroine of the story loves to put people together who she thinks will be good for each other. She herself, of course, vows to never marry. She will live with her father, Mr. Woodhouse, at their estate forever. She's happy to just be the aunt and that her sister, Isabella, has married Mr. John Knightley and they already have five children. She's also very happy to have as a dear friend, next-door-neighbor, constant visitor, and at times, unwelcome conscience for her behavior, John's brother, Mr. Knightley. He owns the estate next door. Mr. Woodhouse, Emma, Mr. Knightley, along with Mrs. Weston (Emma's dear friend and governess who helped raise her from the time of her mother's death), and her new husband, Mr. Weston, are all good friends and gather quite frequently for socializing. Also privy to the circle are Mrs. Bates, her daughter, Miss Bates, and her granddaughter, Jane Fairfax, newly come to town and also Emma's age. Rounding out the tete-a-tete group are the clergyman, Mr. Elton, and the younger friend of Emma's, Harriet Smith, who is of a lower "station" than Emma, and Frank Churchill, Mr. Weston's son from a first marriage who was taken to live with his mother's sister's wealthy family as an infant when his mother passed suddenly.

The characters are endearing, and annoying at times, but lovely characters, as usual by Jane Austen. The heart of the book is about family, friends, feelings, falling in love, and the misunderstandings and deliberate misconceptions that eventually lead everyone to find the true love they're meant to have. As I said, Emma is determined never to marry, but she has no problem trying to help other people along the way. And here is the synopsis of the book's love stories as briefly as I can put it. Robert Martin, a local farmer/businessman, loves Harriet Smith. Harriet loves Robert. On Emma's advice, Harriet refuses Robert's proposal. Mr. Elton loves Harriet (or so Emma thinks). Harriet soon loves Mr. Elton. Revelation...Mr. Elton really loves Emma! Heartbreak ensues. Jane Fairfax comes to town. Mr. Elton leaves town for awhile. Frank Churchill comes to town. Frank loves Emma (or so everyone thinks). Emma loves Frank (for a few weeks). Jane Fairfax is forlorn. Did she love her best friend's husband and come to town to get over it? Mr. Knightley sympathizes with Jane Fairfax. Mrs. Weston tells Emma that Mr. Knightly loves Jane Fairfax. Emma protests vehemently. Mr. Knightly can never get married!! My nephews are his heirs. Hmmppfff! Mr. Elton gets married and brings his new, rich, very snobby wife back to town. A ball is held. Frank Churchill dances with Emma. Mrs. Elton dances with Mr. Weston. All people are employed dancing except for Mr. Elton, Harriet and Mr. Knightly. It is suggested that Mr. Elton dance with Harriet, and within earshot he cruelly refuses (for a clergyman he turns out to be rather mean). Mr. Knightley gallantly saves the day and asks Harriet to dance. Frank Churchill leaves town to go back to his aunt and uncle. Emma falls out of love with Frank. Frank comes back and no longer loves Emma either. Frank rescues Harriet from some thieving gypsies. Frank leaves town again. Harriet confesses to Emma that she is over Mr. Elton and now loves someone who is far above her "station" who came to her rescue. Emma thinks Harriet loves Frank and Frank loves Harriet. Frank comes back into town and it is revealed that he and Jane Fairfax have been secretly engaged all along! Only the recent death of his snobby rich aunt made them capable of revealing their misleading everyone. Emma goes to comfort Harriet who must be crushed at a second heartbreak. Aghast, Harriet claims it's not Frank who she loves, but Mr. Knightley. Does Mr. Knightley love Harriet too? They've spent some recent time together! At this confession, Emma instantly knows in her heart what she's never been able to admit....SHE loves Mr. Knightley and always has. Miserable, Emma waits for Mr. Knightley to come back into town. He has gone to visit his brother and her sister in London. Mr. Knightley arrives back and immediately goes to see Emma. He looks pained and tells her he has a confession to make. She thinks he's going to tell her he loves Harriet. She tells him to stop. He thinks she doesn't want to hear his true feelings and can guess that he's about to confess his love to her and he is shamed. Fortunately, they only walk for a few more minutes when he persists and confesses his love for Emma! She confesses her love as well. :-) Now, to just break the news to her father and to poor Harriet. Father soon gives in to the idea and Harriet is already back in love with Robert Martin who has been patient and proposed to her again. Mr. and Mrs. Weston have a new baby girl. Frank and Jane are engaged to be married. Harriet and Robert get married...by Mr. Elton, no less. Mrs. Elton continues to be a snobby p.i.a. And...Emma and Mr. Knightley get married with Isabella and John there for the happy event. :-)

Now, imagine all that in Jane Austen's incomparable lovely writing and you've got quite a book! Just one small snippet of example that I love about her writing. When Mr. and Mrs. Weston are trying to plan the ball, they ask the advice of their close friends and try to decide if their home is big enough for the full supper that should accompany the fete:

    Mrs. Weston proposed having no regular supper; merely sandwiches, etc., set out in the little room; but that was scouted as a wretched suggestion. A private dance without sitting down to supper, was pronounced an infamous fraud upon the rights of men and women; and Mrs Weston must not speak of it again.

I just loved that! :-)

Finished: If This Is A Man (Levi). Horrific, but matter-of-fact account of the Italian Jewish author's year spent at the Auschwitz III prison camp at Monowitz, which housed several thousand prisoners. Of the over six hundred Italian Jewish prisoners who were carted to the prison camp, only about a hundred of the healthiest men were chosen to be kept alive to work at the Buna factory at Monowitz. All the women, children, elderly and the rest of the men were put to immediate death. After eleven months of horror, when the Germans finally retreated due to the approaching Russians, only about twenty of the Italians were still alive. The author, Primo Levi, sick with scarlet fever, was left behind in the infirmary along with the other prisoners too sick to walk. The rest of the prisoners were taken by the Germans as they retreated...taken on the 12 mile death march, where most of them died. The horrors that the prisoners had to go through, from the sub-freezing conditions, to the starving conditions, to the constant fear of being sent to Birkenau (Auschwitz II, the extermination camp) on "selection" days, to the insufferable work conditions, to the basic stripping of humanity of each man, made me read the book with tears in my eyes and a catch in my stomach. I've never understood how the hatred of Hitler and his regime for other human beings could have occurred in a civilized world. Never. It's hard to believe my parents were alive and teenagers when all this was going on. Primo Levi described the feelings in a way I can't put into words as he wrote about being called into the office of one of the German doctors to be interviewed to possibly work in the chemistry lab at the prison camp. Levi is a Haftling (prisoner) known only by the number tattooed on his arm:

    Pannwitz is tall, thin, blond; he has eyes, hair and nose as all Germans ought to have them, and sits formidably behind a complicated writing table. I, Haftling 174517, stand in his office, which is a real office, shining, clean and ordered, and I feel that I would leave a dirty stain whatever I touched.
    When he finished writing, he raised his eyes and looked at me.
    From that day I have thought about Doktor Pannwitz many times and in many ways. I have asked myself how he really functioned as a man; how he filled his time, outside of the Polymerization and the Indo-Germanic conscience; above all when I was once more a free man, I wanted to meet him again, not from a spirit of revenge, but merely from a personal curiosity about the human soul.
    Because that look was not one between two men; and if I had known how completely to explain the nature of that look, which came as if across the glass window of an aquarium between two beings who live in different worlds, I would also have explained the essence of the great insanity of the third Germany.
    One felt in that moment, in an immediate manner, what we all thought and said of the Germans. The brain which governed those blue eyes and those manicured hands said: 'This something in front of me belongs to a species which it is obviously opportune to suppress. In this particular case, one has to first make sure that it does not contain some utilizable element.'

I will always be stunned by the atrocities of the persecution of innocent people by Hitler and his ilk, and by the horrific death camps that became the final physical resting place for so many people. If This Is A Man ends with the Russians coming into the near barren prison camp and Primo Levi knowing that he has at least survived to be free. Whether he will survive his illness and make it back home is addressed in his next book, The Truce. Obviously he makes it home and lives to write the books. But...it was a journey of nine months before he got home. I don't think I've got it in me to read that one yet, but I will eventually.

Finished: State of Wonder (Patchett). A wonderful book given to me by a dear friend, Leslie! I really enjoyed it. :-) Not a book I had sought out myself, I wasn't at all sure what to expect...and I was so pleasantly surprised. The story of 42 year old Dr. Marina Singh, a doctor of pharmacology who has spent the past fifteen years working in Minnesota is thrust into the world of the Amazon when her close colleague goes missing on a company trip there. Describing it that way doesn't begin to touch on the emotion of Marina's story, or of the Lakashi tribe she is forced to become accustomed to, or the richness of all the other characters, not to mention the environment of the Amazon itself.

Years before, Marina was an incredibly smart doctor, and was in her fourth year of her gynecological/obstetrics residency at Johns Hopkins when a horrific accident happened. After monitoring a young mother on her third childbirth, whose baby was apparently presenting breech, and whose fetal heart beat was completely erratic, Marina opted to do a C-section after repeatedly trying to get in touch with her attending physician with no luck. Unfortunately, in her hurry, as she sliced through the uterine wall, she sliced the baby who was in fact breech, but also face up! She sliced right down his face and through one eye, blinding him. Though not fired from the hospital, she herself couldn't live with the consequences so she switched to pharmaceuticals and the study of cholesterol.

As the story opens, Dr. Marina Singh is happy to have been in Minnesota, working at the Vogel pharmaceutical company. She has been partnered with Anders Eckman, a happily married father of three young boys, for the past seven years. Marina, herself, is in a secret relationship with her boss, and the president of Vogel, Mr. Fox. Vogel's huge investment at the moment happens to be in research being conducted in the Amazon by Dr. Annick Swenson. Dr. Swenson just happens to be the no-nonsense, tough as nails doctor who was Marina's attending physician all those years ago at Johns Hopkins. Dr. Swenson has spent the past two years of Vogel's time and money researching the Lakashi tribe in hopes of developing a pill that will prolong, or bring back in some instances, the fertility in women. Vogel and Mr. Fox both see the potential in the monetary value of the drug to millions of women who want to have children later, or to those who can't afford the expensive invitro methods now available. The Lakashi tribe is unique in that their women remain of childbearing capability even into their seventies. The problem is....Mr. Fox hasn't heard from Dr. Swenson with any reports of her progress in over two years. Oh, she's alive and well...he knows that. She just doesn't want to be bothered with the questions, the paper work and the bureaucracy of it all. So, Mr. Fox sends Anders Eckman down to scope out the progress and come back with a report. After being gone for two months and with limited communication, a rudimentary letter is finally sent from Dr. Swenson to Mr. Fox informing him that Anders Eckman "got fever" and died. Though her letter is succinct, she tells Mr. Fox that she made sure Mr. Eckman had a Christian burial.

Marina is stunned and bereaved, but not as much as Anders' wife, Karen. Karen tells Marina that someone must go down there and find out exactly what happened to Anders and see where he is buried at the very least. In the meantime, though he cares very deeply for Marina, Mr. Fox also needs someone to go down and finish the job Anders was to do and bring back reports of the progress of the fertility drug. So...with pressure from both sides, Marina reluctantly agrees to go to the Amazon. Her trip is wrought with all the typical perils...first her luggage, including all her clothing and her phone, is lost. Then, she is stonewalled in the port city of Manaus by the caretakers who work for Dr. Swenson who want to guard her privacy. It takes a few weeks before she can get anyone to listen to her and finally Dr. Swenson herself shows up in Manaus. She's still as abrupt as ever and tries to convince Marina that there's nothing more to tell about the death of Anders, and that though he had been pleasant enough, it had been more of a nuisance to have him there over her shoulder. Dr. Swenson brings along a young native boy, Easter, who is about eleven, who is deaf and who drives her pontoon boat for her. Easter is so endearing and lively and capable and lovable, you just fall in love with him! Anyway, Dr. Swenson can't talk Marina out of going into the depths of the Amazon with her, so she brings her along on the trip back.

The welcoming back of the pontoon boat with Dr. Swenson aboard is an amazing visual of lighted torches by the Lakashi tribe, who all see her as a miracle healer. Marina soon gets to know the tribe, and she shares a small room with Easter. Dr. Swenson tells her that Easter is actually of another, more dangerous, cannibalistic tribe, the Hummocca, who brought him over in a canoe one day eight years before terribly sick in hopes that she could fix him. She claims they abandoned him and she's raised him since. It turns out...Dr. Swenson hasn't just been there for two years. She's been coming down as often as possible for the past fifty years, since she was a young intern herself. She knows the people and the environment very well, and she's now seventy-three years old. Marina sees in her the old, tough instructor, but Dr. Swenson doesn't recognize Marina at first, or so you think. As it turns out, the secret to the prolonged reproductive abilities of the Lakashi women is all in the bark of a certain tree. The women begin gnawing the bark of these trees and sucking their juices when they begin their menstrual cycles and continue their entire lives. Dr. Swenson is close to perfecting the actual drug for it, but there is an even bigger payoff at stake. What she and her very small team of doctors have discovered in their lab there in the jungle is that in addition to the reproductive enhancements, whatever is in the trees has also kept any of the Lakashi women from ever contracting malaria! Dr. Swenson has actually become her own human test subject, as Marina soon discovers that Dr. Swenson is seven months pregnant. Dr. Swenson says that she has realized that even if they could make this drug available world-wide and make Vogel rich...it doesn't take away the fact that she's still seventy-three and the rest of her body and her mind itself are just too old to be bringing a new life into the world. No...the real reason she's been so secretive is the malaria component. They aren't quite to the point of figuring out the right combination to turn THAT part of it into a drug, and they know, or assume, that if Vogel knew that all the money they were pouring into the operation would result more in a third world vaccine that would needed to be provided free to everyone, rather than the coveted reproductive pill they were after, that they would shut the whole operation down. So.....Dr. Swenson doesn't want Marina to report back to her bosses.

In the meantime, Marina has become mesmerized by the Lakashi people, and fallen in love with Easter herself. She can see where he had become close to Anders as Easter has Anders passport, and there is evidence of Anders taking Easter under his wing and teaching him the beginnings of writing. Dr. Swenson, realizing that her childbirth could be complicated, drags Marina along to the birth of one of the native women's difficult deliveries. It turns out...Marina has to perform a C-section with the little rudimentary implements she has. After all has gone well, Dr. Swenson lets her know that she does, in fact, remember the incident in Baltimore all those years ago! She just wanted to throw her back into the ring because she figures she could end up needing a C-section and she wants Dr. Singh to stay around to do it. Meanwhile, Marina has asked everyone more about Anders' death, and they all say that he had a horrible fever that they all thought he would recover, but he died so suddenly. Marina asks to see where he is buried, but Dr. Swenson admits that after he died, she let the Lakashi, who adored Anders, have his body to carry of in the night and bury in their own way. Marina is horrified, but has come to accept more and more of their ways. She writes letters home to Mr. Fox as often as she can, but letters must be carried down river by random people in boats, so she never knows if he receives them. One night, waiting by the river with Easter to see if a boat will come, a big boat with a motor is heard and none other than the caretaker from Manaus is there, along with Mr. Fox! He had not received any of Marina's letters and had come in search of her. He's pretty shocked to see how accustomed she's become to the tribal life, and how she's dressed, etc.

Dr. Swenson is mad that the "company man" from Vogel has come, yet she willingly shows him all the reproductive results...including her own pregnancy! Mr. Fox is ecstatic with the news and agrees to leave the next day and leave Marina there until she can help deliver the baby. He'll report back to the board and things will proceed along. Mr. Fox and Marina don't really get any time alone, and Marina begins to wonder whether he really cared more about the results than her. She doesn't see much of a future anyway because they all lied to him by omission....no one told him that their main goal out of all this has become the vaccine for malaria. She knows that even if she gets back home and they are still together, it won't be for long since he will find out she didn't tell him either. The caretaker, Barbara, from Masau tells Marina how they almost didn't make it there...they went up the wrong tributary off the river and had an encounter with the fierce Hummocca tribe. Arrows were showering down upon them as they quickly turned their boat around to leave. Barbara is crying as she tells Marina of the surreal experience and how she thought she saw her father running to her from the midst of all the Hummocca, screaming something to her. She knows it was her father watching out for her because he's been dead since she was ten. After sending Mr. Fox, etal, back off on the boat the next morning, Dr. Swenson tells Marina that she waited until they were gone to tell her that her baby has died inside her in the past two days. She can tell because she hasn't felt it move, can't hear it with a stethoscope, and she herself has hypertension. Sure enough, Marina does a C-section on Dr. Swenson and delivers a stillborn baby...and one that has the deformity of a mermaid tail, i.e., both legs fused together. Perhaps it isn't best to tamper with nature? Anyway, as Dr. Swenson is recovering, Marina tells her about Barbara's vision of her father. Dr. Swenson nearly sits straight up and says...don't you know what that means? That was no vision....that must have been tall, blond Anders! Maybe he's alive after all! What do you mean he's alive? You said the Lakashi carried off his dead body?? Well...I fudged that a little...in reality, he wandered off in the night one night in his delirium of fever and we figured him for dead when we couldn't find him after a few days.

Marina decides right then and there she must go and confront the Hummocca tribe and try to get Anders back. She takes peanut butter and oranges and Easter to drive the boat. She won't let anyone else go with them. As they manage to finally find their way to the Hummocca's shore, they are showered with arrows. Marina holds up an orange, though, and shouts a form of Lakashi tongue the best she can. She suddenly hears an English voice...it's Anders!! He is there and in the midst of the dangerous Hummocca. They had saved him from his fever, but kept him there with them. He tells Marina that there isn't much hope...they will kill them all. He asks her what she brought to trade and she says oranges and peanut butter. They like the taste of the oranges, and Anders is indicating they want to trade those for him when a female of the tribe starts shrieking and running towards the boat. She has seen Easter and recognizes him as her son!! She makes her way to the boat and confusion ensues. Anders tells Marina they want Easter for him. She says absolutely not, they can't do that. She loves that boy! Anders says, they'll just kill all of us and take him and the boat anyway...we have no choice. Anders comes to the boat and he and Easter have a touching, tearful reunion, but then Anders pries him loose and hands him to the Hummoccan woman. :-( :-( Easter doesn't know what's going on and gives them the most heart-wrenching look. Anders and Marina start the boat and leave him there. It is so, so sad! When they get back to the Lakashi tribe, Marina tells the very upset Dr. Swenson, who considered Easter to be like a son, that the Hummocca's kept Easter. Dr. Swenson then confesses that when they brought him to be healed years ago, that they came back only a week later to get him. She couldn't explain to them that he needed a month's more of medicine, so she just told them he was dead. So, I guess at the expense of Easter, he was returned to his rightful parents. Dr. Swenson seems to think he'll grab a canoe and make his way back, but Marina says you didn't see the look of betrayal on his face. Dr. Swenson wants Marina to stay there and take over for her. She tells her she'll never get this place and the people out of her system now, but Marina is disenchanted with it all now and just wants to get home. She and Anders go home and the last scene is Anders hopping out of the cab and his amazing and sobbing wife and boys seeing him alive.

Such a good book! And, I thank you so much Leslie for passing it along to me! :-)

Finished: Thirteen Reasons Why (Asher). omg, what an overwhelming book. I'm wondering if this book has become any kind of required reading for kids entering high school? The thirteen reasons are the thirteen reasons why high-schooler Hannah Baker commits suicide...or more to the point...thirteen people. Hannah Baker makes an intricate set of audio tapes recounting the incidences leading up to her loss of self and loss of purpose and her decision to commit suicide. Starting with her innocent first kiss with the boy she liked the summer before starting high school turning into harmful rumors that she did more than kiss, spread by, of course, the boy himself, and recounting each incident or experience that continues to batter her reputation and delicate self-esteem; each person gets the entire set of tapes to listen to and hear how they added to Hannah's plummeting sense of self-worth over the first years of high school. The story is told through the eyes of Clay Jensen, the one boy who truly cared for her. His heart breaks as he listens to all the tapes and tears his hair out wondering how he could have helped her. He's the only person on the tapes that she puts on the "list" to actually tell a good story about and tell that she cared for him and she's sorry. He heartbreakingly listens and recounts his own experiences with Hannah. I can't really do a detailed recap...it was just too sad. Hopefully this book is a lesson to any teenager, or any person at all, who reads it to know that even the smallest action on your part towards another person can have a huge impact on them.

Finished: A Handful of Dust (Waugh). A good book...starting out a bit light-hearted, but then taking such a dark turn. I hated the ending! A Handful of Dust is considered one of the top 100 books on a few different lists. It is billed as uproariously funny and witty. I kind of get the witty part, because the dialogue is very quick and, well, witty at times. However, I never laughed out loud and the underlying plot of the novel I would never classify as uproariously funny.

It's the 1930's and Lord Tony Last and his wife, Lady Brenda Last live on a massive family estate, Hetton Abbey, complete with it's own little church, in the England countryside. They've been married for 7 years and have a precocious young son, John Andrew. Little John Andrew is actually a fleshed out character with many scenes of dialogue, the liveliness and innocence of a five or six year old, and his own pony he's learning to take over jumps. He adores his parents, but he's mostly in the company of Nanny, though Tony and Brenda appear to adore John as well. Tony loves the country estate and was even born there. He is opposed to remodeling, loving the Gothic architecture, etc. He intends to hand the estate down to his son to keep in the family. Brenda and Tony have a loving, quipping, non-stressful life, complete with going in to London every so often to participate in the social scene, or more to their liking, having big parties of people down to Hetton Abbey for weekends.

John Beaver is a twenty-five year old, jobless, society-whore, is the only way I can think to put it, who lives with his mother and contributes in no visible way to their income. His mother runs a little shop that deals with furniture and upholstery and remodeling, etc. John floats through his life waiting for invitations to lunch and dinner from wealthy society women. And, he's not even usually their first choice. (Apparently it was one of the big no no's of English society to have a luncheon or dinner without equal number of men as women, so he would wait by the phone to be called at the last minute to join a party after the phoning woman had exhausted all other choices.) None of the men respect him, i.e., he's not wanted at any of the clubs and most don't give him the time of day.

One evening, after having a few too many drinks at the club, Tony Last mentions off-handedly that John Beaver should come down to Hetton Abbey to see the big house some weekend. John Beaver takes that as an invitation for that very weekend, and shows up just when Tony and Brenda are planning a quiet weekend doing nothing. Tony and Brenda have several bedrooms in the estate, all seemingly named after characters from King Arthur. They put John in the least comfortable room, hoping he'll leave the next day on the train. Tony, who's not really good at socializing with people he doesn't enjoy, leaves Brenda to do most of the entertaining of John Beaver. This is our first inkling that Brenda isn't really happy "stuck" out there in the country. She misses society and the whirl of London. She and John Beaver hit it off and she convinces him, much to Tony's dismay, to stay the entire weekend.

It doesn't take much time at all for Brenda to think she's in love with John. She takes a small flat in London, lying to Tony and telling him she'd like to study a course in Economics. Soon, she's spending more and more time in London, only seeing Tony and John Andrew on the weekends, and even then, usually bringing people with her so she doesn't have to spend too much alone time with Tony. All of society, including Brenda's sister, Marjorie and Tony and Brenda's mutual friend, Jock, know that Brenda and John Beaver are having an affair. It is the talk of all the town, in what I suppose is meant to be part of the humorous part of the book.
At times, John Beaver goes off to travel with his mother, who has ingratiated herself into the Last's life and is now remodeling one of the rooms at Hetton Abbey.

One weekend, John Beaver goes off with his mother to France and Brenda frets for days that something bad will happen to him. It happens to be the same weekend that Hetton Abbey is having its huge annual fox hunt. Brenda won't even stay home for that, even though both Tony and John Andrew beg her to do so. John Andrew will be allowed to ride on a bit of the trail for his first hunt along side his horse trainer and he wants his mother there to see it. But no, she doesn't stay. His father gives instructions that John's only to go for a short bit before heading back to the estate by 1:00. John Andrew is disappointed when the fox and hounds take a turn far from their own pathway, making it impossible that he'll ever get to see any part of the hunt from where he's restricted. Jock, who is along for the hunt, and John's horse trainer, Ben, both say they'd better mind his father. As Ben is taking John back, an accident happens involving a different rider's out-of-control horse. John is thrown from his horse and killed. :-( It's so very sad! Tony is in shock and in a heartbreaking, rambling dialogue tries to figure out how they're going to tell Brenda. Jock offers to go to London immediately to tell her while Tony stays there with John Andrew and makes necessary arrangements.

When Jock finds Brenda, out with her girlfriends, she can immediately tell that something is wrong. Here is the shameless dialogue that instantly added Brenda Last to my least favorite literary characters list:

    Suddenly Brenda became frightened by the strange air of the room and the unfamiliar expression in her friends' faces. She ran downstairs to the room where Jock was waiting.
    "What is it, Jock? Tell me quickly, I'm scared. It's nothing awful, is it?"
    "I'm afraid it is. There's been a very serious accident."
    "John?"
    "Yes."
    "Dead?"
    He nodded.
    She sat down on a hard little Empire chair against the wall, perfectly still with her hands folded in her lap, like a small well-brought-up child introduced into a room full of grown-ups. She said, "Tell me what happened. Why do you know about it first?"
    "I've been down at Hetton since the weekend."
    "Hetton?"
    "Don't you remember? John was going hunting today."
    She frowned, not at once taking in what he was saying. "John...John Andrew...I...Oh thank God..." Then she burst into tears.
    She wept helplessly, turning round in the chair and pressing her forehead against its gilt back.

I gasped when I read it. It was so despicable to me that she thought Jock was talking about John Beaver and when she found out it was her son, her gut instinct said "Oh thank God". I just can't fathom that or get over that at all. Later, as Jock is putting her on the train to head to Hetton she says:

    "When you first told me," she said, "I didn't understand. I didn't know what I was saying."
    "I know."
    "I didn't say anything, did I?"
    "You know what you said."
    "Yes, I know...I didn't mean...I don't think it's any good trying to explain."

Ugh! What a horrible, selfish person she turned out to be. To top it off, she attends John Andrew's funeral and doesn't stay for the weekend with her husband, instead going to stay at her friend, Victoria's, in London. Tony asks to come along and she says no. Even Victoria thinks it's awkward and not the right thing to do. Soon, Brenda writes to Tony and lets him know that she's in love with John Beaver and wants out of the marriage. Tony is shocked about the affair. He had no idea. He's always worried so much about how Brenda was doing. He never dreamed she had cheated on him. He decides to proceed with the divorce, but with another apparent custom of the time; he agrees to go to a hotel for the weekend with another woman, with detectives that HE supplies, so HE can be the one at fault in the divorce...to protect her reputation!! He verbally agrees to a generous "500 hundred a year" for Brenda. In what is supposed to be another humorous bit of the book, I suppose, the woman that agrees to go and spend the actual platonic weekend with Tony brings her young daughter along and the daughter ends up spending all the nights with them as well.

In a conversation we don't ever see, John Beaver encourages Brenda to go for more money. He'll be willing to marry her if she brings alot to the table. After Tony's fake illicit weekend, when Brenda's brother, a solicitor, meets with Tony, he spells out to him that Brenda will require 2000 a year, not 500...and since they have the proof that Tony was an adulterer, the courts will most definitely side with Brenda. Tony is flabbergasted yet again. He says that 2000 a year would break him and to meet that he'd have to sell his beloved family estate just to make that amount. He asks her brother if Brenda realizes that? He wants to speak to Brenda. There's no way Brenda would agree to this solicitation if she knew it meant Tony would have to give up Hetton Abbey. The brother insists she's for it and goes so far as to enlighten Tony that they even intend to request it in court. So, Tony calls Brenda:

    "Brenda, this is Tony....I've just been dining with Reggie."
    "Yes, he said something about it."
    "He tells me that you are going to sue for alimony. Is that so?"
    "Tony, don't be so bullying. The lawyers are doing everything. It's no use coming to me."
    "But did you know that they propose to ask for two thousand?"
    "Yes. They did say that. I know it sounds a lot but..."
    "And you know exactly how my money stands, don't you? You know it means selling Hetton, don't you?...hullo, are you still there?"
    "Yes, I'm here."
    "You know it means that?"
    "Tony, don't make me feel a beast. Everything has been so difficult."
    "You do know what you are asking?"
    "Yes...I suppose so."
    "All right, that's all I wanted to know."
    "Tony, how odd you sound...don't ring off."
    He hung up the receiver and went back to the smoking room. His mind had suddenly become clearer on many points that had puzzled him. A whole Gothic world had come to grief...there was now no armor glittering through the forest glades, no embroidered feet on the green sward; the cream and dappled unicorns had fled...
    "Reggie sat expanded in his chair. "Well?"
    "I got on to her. You were quite right. I'm sorry I didn't believe you. It seemed so unlikely at first."
    "That's all right, my dear fellow."
    "I've decided exactly what's going to happen."
    "Good."
    "Brenda is not going to get her divorce. The evidence I provided at Brighton isn't worth anything. There happens to have been a child there all the time. She slept both nights in the room I am supposed to have occupied. If you care to bring the case I shall defend it and win, but I think when you have seen my evidence you will drop it. I am going away for six months or so. When I come back, if she wishes it, I shall divorce Brenda without settlements of any kind. Is that clear?"
    "But look her my dear fellow."
    "Goodnight. Thank you for the dinner."

OK, I might have squealed a "Yay" out at this point in the book! Finally, Tony saw how horrible Brenda was!! Once Tony goes abroad, Brenda barely has enough to live on from the small amount of money she gets monthly from her own parents' dowry. John Beaver loses interest and goes off to America with his mother. The last we hear of Brenda she's trying to make ends meet. Tony, on the other hand, meets up with an explorer, Dr. Messinger, who is headed to find a lost city in Brazil. Tony foolishly goes along with him and the last couple of chapters of the book describe how they get lost in the Amazon rain forest with a tribe of natives helping them along...natives who eventually leave them. Tony becomes sick with a fever and Dr. Messinger is drowned when he tries to go for help. Tony has hallucinations of Brenda and all the things that have happened to him in the last year. He stumbles upon a clearing with a large hut. Mr. Todd, a native man who speaks English (his father was English, but his mother a native of the area) nurses him back to health. Sadly, though, Mr. Todd never intends to let Tony go!! He keeps him there to read his books to him because Mr. Todd can't read. His book collection is entirely Dickens. Tony brings up the subject of leaving and is never met with success, but he lives in hope that someone from back home must be searching for him. Finally, one day, Mr. Todd takes Tony to a native celebration and drugs him. Tony sleeps for two days and wakes up without his watch. As Tony's head clears, Mr. Todd explains that there was a British search party there looking for Tony. Mr. Todd told them that Tony had died and showed them a grave. Then, Mr. Todd gave them Tony's watch to take home as proof. This is the last we see of poor Tony. :-(

Back home...Tony's cousins have inherited Hetton Abbey, as specified in Tony's will. They hold a memorial service and erect a monument to Tony labeling him an "Explorer". He was only 32 when he died. The book ends with one of Tony's younger-set cousins claiming that he intends to keep up Hetton Abbey and run it just the way Tony would have wanted.

Isn't that a horrible ending??? I was really disappointed by the ending of this book. I wanted Tony to go and have an adventure and come back and maybe meet someone else to make him happy. Oh well! It was a very well written book and I might even be tempted to read Brideshead Revisisted, Waugh's other big book.
 
 
 

Finished: Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy ( le Carre). Another thriller I couldn't put down! Although, it wasn't quite as fast paced as Gone Girl...and it was more espionage spy stuff rather than thriller, I really liked it! Now, I really want to see the movie that was out last year. :-) Set, from what I could tell, in the late sixties, heading into the seventies, the book is about a British spy, George Smiley, who has been forced to retire after his good friend and closet ally, and "Control", the head of the British spy network, has died. Smiley is asked by a select group of former spy people to come back and investigate the possibility of a mole in the British spy network (called the Circus), because an agent has come in from the field claiming to have met a Russian spy who he got to know, and whose diary he has. Before she was beaten and dragged back to Russia, she wanted to defect and work for British intelligence. The field agent, Ricki Tarr, who has been erratic in the past, is desperate to make her a deal so he messages the new top dog at the British agency, Percy Alleline. The new top dog has three right hand men, Bill Haydon, Toby Esterhase and Roy Bland. Before the Russian agent, Irina, can be snapped up and given protection, somehow the word leaks out to the Russians and that's when she's sent home and ultimately executed. The diary, however, gives specific details of a deep cover Russian spy in the Circus known only to the Russians as Gerald. Also...there was an incident recently in which a deep cover field agent, Jim Prideaux, has been given a top secret mission in Czechoslovakia...to get information from a top general who knows the name of a Russian spy in the British organization. When Prideaux gets to the rendezvous, he is ambushed and is shot in the back. He is eventually recovered by the Brits and told to go into retirement and forget everything that just happened. Ergo, because of both of these recent developments...the new handful of people who contact George Smiley are certain that one of the top four guys has been working as a deep cover Russian spy for years. Smiley and the handful, including a young agent named Peter Guillam, work quickly and quietly to look at all the old documentation they can. This requires a few tense, but nicely written scenes of stealing old reports from the archives, etc. Smiley interviews many "old" agents who have been "retired", but who have specific details about Operation Testify, the failed Czech mission. It's nerve-wracking and exciting to read as you try and figure things out yourself while Smiley gets closer and closer after each person he talks to! Meanwhile, Jim Prideaux is now working as a teacher at a boy's school and is well-liked. Smiley tracks him down. Prideaux is the last piece of the puzzle; he needs to hear about the details of the mission in Czechoslovakia to put a name to the mole. As it turns out, "Control", Smiley's old best friend and boss sent Prideaux to do this top-secret mission without letting anyone else know, or so he thought, because he had figured out there was a Russian spy in their organization, he just didn't know which of the top guys it was! He even had Smiley on the list of possible candidates. So...what Prideaux was supposed to do was come back with one word, and one word only, from the Czechoslovakian general which would identify the mole. No matter what happened, if Prideaux was captured or anything, he had to somehow signal the "Control" with this one word, even if it meant scribbling it on the outside of a Czech prison. The pre-arranged code words were based on an old children's poem:

Tinker
Tailor
Soldier
Sailer
Rich Man
Poor Man
Beggerman
Thief.

Alleline was to be Tinker, Haydon to be Tailor, Bland to be Soldier. They skipped sailor because it sounded too much like tailor. Esterhase was to be poorman and Smiley was to be beggerman. (I don't know why they didn't use rich man). Anyway...it all became a moot point when Prideaux was ambushed. When you find out in the end, though, who the mole is, it is very sad because he's the person who recruited Prideaux when they were both in college and they'd been very close friends! So, don't read any further if you don't want to know who the mole was. Seriously, stop right now.



The mole ends up being Bill Haydon, who had also been a very good friend of Smiley's! He's the most well-liked of the agents and, though he's probably an obvious choice, it's still a shock. Actually, most shocking would have been for the mole to turn out to be Smiley himself. :-) I gave that some serious thought...that Smiley would spend the entire book finding out if anyone could actually identify him as the mole and then disappear into the night...but then I nixed that idea; Smiley was too innately good. Anyway...as it turns out, Haydon was extremely patriotic and loved his country. However, early on in "the Circus" he realized that the real power/spy struggle was between America and Russia...that England was just a blip on the map and even completely doing away with their agency or exploding all their resources wouldn't make a dent in the world power struggle. (These were his thoughts, not mine.) So...he decided he needed to throw his weight behind one of the two big superpowers for the good of the world, and he chose Russia. He hated America and everything it stood for. So, that ends up being the explanation. He says he never gave anything to the Russians that would truly hurt England...it was all about trying to gather intelligence to trade with the U.S. and then give THAT to Russia. To save face, the British intelligence group is all set to have Haydon sent to Russia to spend the rest of his days. However, he mysteriously ends up with his neck twisted broken the day before he's supposed to leave. Then, they flash to Jim Prideaux back at the boy's school and teaching the boys. I can only assume that Prideaux was the one to exact his revenge!

Another good book! I may have to read some more le Carre at some point! I'm definitely going to see the movie now with Gary Oldman and Colin Firth!!

Finished: Gone Girl (Flynn). omg, I couldn't put this book down! A book set in current times. A seemingly ideal, young husband and wife are about to celebrate their 5th wedding anniversary when suddenly the wife goes missing. Of course, the husband, Nick, becomes the prime suspect as horrifying evidence and public opinion start piling up against him. His wife, Amy, has disappeared with the front door wide open, the iron still turned on, her blood sloppily wiped up off the kitchen floor, and Nick with no alibi to account for his time. Having met and fallen in love in New York, their first three years of married life have been dreamy, but when they both lose their jobs as writers (as the evil Internet has made magazine jobs obsolete), and, when Nick's beloved mother back in Missouri is suddenly diagnosed with stage 4 cancer, Nick and Amy pack up and move to Missouri and their relationship starts to disintegrate. The book chapters alternate between first Nick's point of view and then Amy's, slowly revealing what has really happened and who, if anyone, is the real psycho. I loved this book and all I can think now is will they make a movie of it?? :-) Off to look up what other books Gillian Flynn has written!

Finished: The Homecoming (Pinter). Hmm...not what I expected, and for me, certainly not the masterpiece I'd been looking forward to. I'd put it #3 on my "Weird-Confusing-Huh?" list right after #1 Waiting for Godot and #2 The Crying of Lot 49. A very short, but highly acclaimed, Tony-award winning play (guess you had to maybe see it in person??) that left me feeling a little disturbed; as if I didn't just read another piece of literature, but, instead, ate the vomit-flavored Bertie Bott's jelly bean from Harry Potter, and now I have to spend the next few hours trying to get the taste out of my mouth!

The Homecoming is set in a flat in northern London that is shared by a working class family, 70 year old, retired butcher, Max, the crass, outspoken, belligerent patriarch; Sam, his 63 year old complacent, chauffeur brother; and Max's two grown sons, Lenny, the 30-something pimp and Joey, the 20-something demolit ionist by day, boxer wanna-be by night. The wife and mother has been dead for awhile. The men talk over one another and yell at each other and act belligerent and threatening towards each other, especially Max and Lenny. While I was reading..."lowlife" kept flashing in my head.

So, after they all go to bed the door lock jingles and in walks the third son, Teddy, and his wife of six years, Ruth. Teddy teaches philosophy at a university in America and hasn't been home since he's been married. As a matter of fact, when Max first sees them the next morning, he thinks his son has brought a prostitute into the house to spend the night. It takes him awhile to believe they're married. As it turns out, Ruth and Teddy were married in London the day before Teddy left six years earlier, so I guess Ruth is coming home as well. Weird sexual innuendo ensues between Ruth and Lenny. Teddy doesn't really do anything about it. Ruth and Teddy have three sons at home, but Teddy wanted Ruth to meet his family. I think it becomes more and more obvious that Ruth wanted to get away on a trip? They've gone to Venice first. Anyway...Ruth starts to open up about what she did before she was married, saying she was a model. I think that's supposed to imply that she also slept around for money? Teddy decides they should head on back home and packs their bags. Lenny insists they stay awhile and at least let him dance with his sister-in-law. Lenny and Ruth slow dance right there and then kiss!!! Teddy just stands there with the suitcases. Then, Joey goes to Ruth and they start rolling around on the floor kissing. Again, Teddy just stands there.

Fade to black and come back and Joey is coming down the stairs. Lenny berates him for being up there for two hours with "her" and not going all the way. Lenny asks Teddy if Ruth is a tease, she must be a tease. Teddy just says she's not well. Max, Sam, Lenny and Joey decide that Ruth should stay there with them if Teddy wants to go on back to America. They decide they'll all pitch in with what money they can to keep her there...but they go one better and decide Lenny could put her to "work" and she could stay there and earn her keep for a few hours a day and then come back to live with them at night. When Ruth comes downstairs, Teddy still wants her to go home with him, but he tells her that she has an offer to stay there with his family. He says that he and the boys will get along ok without her for awhile. Ruth starts to negotiate with Lenny saying what all she'll need to stay...a new wardrobe, a flat with three bedrooms and a bath, and lady in waiting, etc. They don't mention to her their prostitution idea. She decides to stay and tells Teddy "don't become a stranger". Teddy leaves. Ruth sits down in the chair and Joey comes to put his head in her lap. She runs her fingers through his hair and Max crawls on his knees over to where she's sitting and says he's not too old either. "Kiss me", says Max, the last words of the play!

Aggghhhhh! How weird is that??? Is it just me?? I spent dinner telling Earl about it because I was so flabbergasted. He says that besides the point maybe being that you can't go home again, you also can't escape home, i.e., what you were before. Or, in this case, what Ruth was before she was married? I don't know. I think that's about as good an explanation as there is. And Teddy's non-reaction through the whole play? Maybe he's been putting up with her behavior for six years and was ready to get her away from their sons. Weird, confusing, huh?. Honestly, Harold Pinter won the Nobel prize for Literature with this play as one of the reasons, and this play won the Tony for Best Play. I must be missing something. That's all I've got to say about that.

Finished: Midnight's Children (Rushdie). Detailed, descriptive, mystical, historical book about a child born at midnight the night that India became an independent country. Saleem Sinai (and 1000 other children) are born between the stroke of midnight and 1:00 a.m. on this infamous day, on August 15, 1947. The book follows Saleem's life and experiences as they seem to mirror the experiences of India the nation. A book like Midnight's Children, which is highly acclaimed, is one of those books that forces me to stop reading the book and read about the history of the country I'm reading about! I knew nothing about India's people or history, and now I know just a little bit. We follow Saleem and India through the new Independence, and through the partitioning of India, whose biggest result was the creation of Pakistan, where the majority of the Muslim faith lived. However, not all. Creating Pakistan for the Muslim's with the idea of the majority of India being Hindu, caused the great shift of people trying to get to their prospective areas. Where they met in the middle, there was intense conflict! We also follow Saleem through the assassination of Gandhi, the power struggles in India, the War of 1965, in which most of Saleem's family was killed, the War of 1971, and the rule of Indira Gandhi, including her son Sanjay's "slum cleansing" and "family planning" initiatives, i.e., the forced sterilization of many of the poor sector of India. Saleem lives to be only 31, so the history of India is only followed until 1978.

So...as the book follows these actual historical events, Saleem's own personal history is going right along side them. Rushdie intermixes current events with the narrator's own thoughts and experiences, so we get a steady intermingling of the two worlds. (For instance, in an anonymous note that Saleem writes in his youth, he clips the letters from various headlines of the time and we, the readers, see several startling, true headlines of events that are happening then and there.) The book starts off with Saleem's grandfather, Aadam Aziz, a doctor, who courts and eventually marries Naseem Ghani. Aadam's parents own a jewelry shop, and in one of my favorite descriptive passages of the book, Aadam is on his knees praying on the freezing ground when his prominent nose leads his head to fall forward and hit the ground where his nose bleeds.

One Kashmiri morning in the early spring of 1915, my grandfather Aadam Aziz hit his nose against a frost-hardened tussock of earth while attempting to pray. Three drops of blood plopped out of his left nostril, hardened instantly in the brittle air and lay before his eyes on the prayer-mat, transformed into rubies. Lurching back until he knelt with his head once more upright, he found that the tears which has sprung to his eyes had solidified, too; and at that moment, as he brushed diamonds contemptuously from his lashes, he resolved never again to kiss earth for any god or man. This decision, however, made a hole in him, a vacancy in a vital inner chamber, leaving him vulnerable to women and history. Unaware of this at first, despite his recently completed medical training, he stood up, rolled the prayer-mat into a thick cheroot, and holding it under his right arm surveyed the valley through clear, diamond-free eyes. 

Aadam, with his spiritual hole is called to the house of the ailing, unmarried Naseem by her father. Because of tradition, Aadam is only allowed to see the ailing part of Naseem through a 7 inch circle cut into a sheet. Over the months, Naseem's father calls Aadam out for Naseem's various ailments, until little by little, Aadam is falling in love with Naseem one body part at a time, even though he has never seen her face! Finally, Aadam declares his love, Naseem's father chuckles and says "at last", and Naseem consents to marry Aadam. They are married and the sheet with the hole stays with them their entire married life. Soon, Naseem rules the roost of Aadam and their five children, daughters Alia, Mumtaz and Emerald, and sons Hanif and Mustapha. It would take me the entire 500 pages of the book to repeat all the intricate relationships and happenings that lead up to Saleem's birth and continue on with his story! Let's just say that Hanif and Mustapha don't have major parts in the story until later. Alia falls in love with businessman, Ahmed Sinai, and he her...until he meets her sister Mumtaz. Mumtaz, though, has fallen in love with Nadir Kahn, who is in fear of assassination so is hidden in the basement of the Aziz family for two years. Mumtaz and Nadir are married, but her family is outraged when they find out the marriage has never been consummated. (I guess a huge show of dishonor?) Anyway, Nadir divorces Mumtaz and flees. Though Mumtaz always loves Nadir, she does fall for Ahmed Sinai, and to the disappointment of her sister, Alia, she marries him. Ahmed changes Mumtaz's name to Amina and they move away to Bombay and have their two children, Saleem and his sister, the Brass Monkey, as they call her.

Then, we pick up with Saleem's story. Saleem is born with a huge, huge nose, shaped, apparently, like India. Amina visits a profit before Saleem's birth and he gives a pretty spot on, but confusing interpretation of what Saleem's life will be like. In addition, there is a prize being offered by the government for the first baby born in the new year...in the hour of India's independence. Amina hopes beyond hope that her baby will be the one, but there is another, poorer woman who she is in competition with. The street-singer's wife, Vanita, is at the hospital at the same time. Amina does, in fact, give birth first, to a son. Vanita gives birth to a son as well just seconds later. Mary, the midwife, in an effort to impress her boyfriend, switches the babies!! She wants to prove that even though one is rich born and one is poor, it is how they are raised that will make the difference. She immediately feels guilty, but the deed is done. She offers to go home with Amina and her family and be a nursemaid to their son. She is like his second mother for years to come. So, Saleem, who is really the son of Vanita, grows up with Amina and Ahmed. Shiva, who is their true son, goes to the streets with his "father", because his mother has died giving birth. Saleem is hailed as the first baby of the independent India and marked for great things. However, he wonders when and what those great things will be. He's an unattractive child with his huge nose. He is called all manner of nicknames growing up, but his mystical nose is an important part of the entire story.

Constantly dripping and clogged, the first mystical event happens when Saleem is hiding in his mother's room and doesn't want to be caught. Unable to stand the drippage one second more, he sucks it all up violently into his head and suddenly he can hear the voices of the other remaining children who were also born at midnight the night of India's indepence! Saleem forms a society, the Midnight Children's Conference, with them and since they can all talk to each other through Saleem's head, they get to know each other at meetings each night. The closer to midnight a child was born, the more powerful his "gift". Since Saleem was born closest to midnight, or so he thinks, he has this incredible power of reading people's thoughts and of being this conduit of all the other children. Shiva, the seemingly second most powerful, has become a street bully and is very aggressive. He insists on being second in command of the society. He thinks they should use their powers to get material things, while Saleem thinks they should see what good they can do for humanity, and more specifically, India, with their gifts. Not all the children are focused on, but a few are. There is Parvati-the-witch who can perform incantations and do spells, etc. She becomes a good friend of Saleem's. There is a child who can time travel, one who can switch sexes at will, one who can travel through reflective surfaces like glass or water, one who is so beautiful that anyone who looks at her freezes to stone, etc. etc. As most societies go, no one can ever agree on anything, so they don't get anything worthwhile accomplished. Oh, and Shiva's big power seems to be his strength and his ability to crush things with his powerful knees. "Nose and knees, knees and nose."

By the time they are 10 years old, most of the children, including Saleem, have lost interest in meeting very often and are going about their daily lives. At a school dance, the unattractive, perpetually runny-nosed Saleem is trying to impress a girl and he actually stands up to some bullies! However, they get the last action in by slamming his hand in a door, slicing off the top of one of Saleem's fingers. After being rushed to the hospital, Saleem's blood type is needed and the doctor explains to Ahmed and Amina that there is no way Saleem could by their biological son. Mary is beside herself, but still doesn't confess to the baby switch. Ahmed is furious with Amina and upon Saleem's release from the hospital he experiences his first exile....he is sent to live with his screenwriter wanna-be Uncle Hanif and his wife, the actress, Pia. They are childless and enjoy having Saleem there. Saleem doesn't understand why his parents have abandoned him, but Mary goes along with them and Saleem stays there for several weeks. He has an "interesting" reaction to having his face pulled into his aunt's beautiful bosom, and realizes he is growing up. Several weeks later, he is sent back home wearing the long pants of a grown young man now, instead of the shorts of a boy. His parents and sister accept him back at home, but it is clear that the Brass Monkey, who has always been treated as a second class citizen compared to her brother, is now the princess of the house. Saleem will never again be treated as the wonder that he was supposed to become. However, his parents do love him in their own way.

There are so many things that go on with other characters, that it's hard to put it all down. For instance, Aadam's other sister, Emerald, marries an important military man, Zulifkar. They have a son who continues to wet his bed into adulthood. This story takes a few tangents, as the uncle prefers to be around Saleem rather than his own son. The Brass Monkey, Saleem's sister, is a devilish girl who loves to set fire to people's shoes (not while they're in them). She also has many admirers, but refuses to believe that anyone could love her, so is horribly cruel to anyone who admits they love her. As a teenager, she is encouraged to sing one day and it is discovered she's got the most beautiful voice in the world. Of course, this is after she has become number one in her parents' eyes and Saleem has been relegated to back up duty. We finally learn her real name, Jamila, and she goes off and becomes a famous singer all over India. Also, there are the side stories of Ahmed's business ups and down and his bizarre ways of locking himself in his office for weeks at a time; and of Amina's rekindling of her romance with Nadir and their secret meetings at a coffee shop. They never physically reunite, but sit and talk and dream. When Saleem finds out what his mother is doing, he is horrified. At the same time, he finds out that his beloved Aunt Pia has been dumped by her own lover, and movie producer who lives near Saleem. (He finds this out by reading her mind when she's upset.) She has been dumped for another woman. Saleem plots revenge and sends the aforementioned anonymous note to the other woman's husband who ends up killing the movie producer! Saleem had not expected this reaction and feels responsible for the murder. And also...the movie producer was his Uncle Hanif's only means of income. When he dies, his Uncle Hanif commits suicide, so Saleem is doubly guilty. The only good result that Saleem can see is that the horror opens up his own mother's eyes, and she quits meeting with Nadir. Anyway....there are so many stories like this within the book, and not enough time or inclination to blog about them all. :-)

Finally, one day when all the family is visiting Ahmed and Amina, Mary...who has been haunted by the ghost of her old boyfriend, comes clean and confesses that she switched Saleem and Shiva at birth! Though there is outrage at first, no one goes in search of the true biological son. Eventually Ahmed even tells his son he loves him, which he hasn't done is several years.  Saleem then consciously quits convening any and all meetings of the Midnight Children's Conference because he doesn't ever want the brutal Shiva to know that he was truly the first born of them all. One day, the parents and the Brass Monkey plan a family picnic and it's really a trick. They take Saleem to the hospital to have his huge, running nose once and for all drained. Though he vehemently protests, Saleem is put under, and when he awakes, the second mystical event has happened with his nose. He can no longer hear people's thoughts or hear the voices of the other midnight's children. However...he can smell for the first time in his life! And not just smell...his sense of smell is so intense that he can smell any and all odors no matter how small...and he can smell emotions as well! He can smell fear and happiness and resentment and disappointment...all of them.

When Saleem is a teenager, his family is in dire straights due to his father's erratic behavior, so they go to live with his Aunt Alia...the one who initially loved Saleem's father! Though she is pleasant on the outside, Saleem can smell her vengeful thoughts. She has never forgiven her sister, Amina for marrying Ahmed. Before she can exact her revenge though, the war of 1965 between India and Pakistan breaks out. In a vivid scene, bombs fall all about and systematically kill nearly everyone in Saleem's family. His grandfather had long since passed away, but his grandmother, Naseem and his uncle's widow, Pia, are killed together at their business venture by one bomb. His parents and Aunt Alia are killed at her home by one bomb. His Aunt Emerald and bed wetting cousin are killed by another bomb (her husband, Zulifkar, having already been killed by his own son when he discovered that his supposedly pristine father was dealing in the illegal black market.) The only family members who are spared are his sister, who is traveling India singing, and his obscure Uncle Mustapha who has never lived near the war torn areas. The bomb that levels Aunt Alia's house blasts up the old dowry trunk that Saleem's grandfather Aadam had given to Ahmed when he married Amina. Inside the trunk was the silver and lapis spittoon that was sentimental to Amina because it belonged to her and Nadir. This spittoon flies through the air and hits Saleem so hard on the head that he develops amnesia. Saleem and the spittoon are taken to the hospital where his sister comes to see him. Seeing that he'll be ok, she hands him over to be taken care of by the army and goes on about her singing career. So, when Saleem awakens he has become part of Pakistan's army! He can't remember his name or any of his life events, but he is attached to the spittoon, and is being used by the army as essentially a bomb sniffing dog because of the abilities of his nose!

In a long sequence where the amnesiac Saleem calls himself the Buddha, he takes three young soldiers in search of enemies. They end up lost in a huge rain forest where they all experience hallucinations. Saleem is bit by a snake and suddenly recovers all his memories! He runs at the mouth and tells the soldiers his life history. They had heard that he might be the brother of the famous Jamila Singer, but now they know for sure! Saleem makes his way back to Pakistan where India has now won and the leaders of Pakistan have surrendered. Miraculously, India has brought in a bunch of street magicians and entertainers for the giant "party". Among those magicians is Saleem's long ago friend, Parvati-the-witch. Since they were able to see visions of each other back in the Midnight Children's Convention days, Parvati immediately recognizes Saleem and screams out his name. This is how he remembers his name. :-) So he won't have to become a prisoner of war, Parvati puts an invisibility spell on Saleem and smuggles him back into India with the help of the Most Charming Man in the World, snake charmer, Picture Singh. Saleem ends up back living with Parvati, Picture Singh and the other street magicians in near poverty in the slums of India. They live by the meager means their tricks bring in. Parvati is in love with Saleem and wants to marry him, but he is impotent and says no. She goes off and finds Shiva, who is by now a huge, yet still deadly, hero in the Indian army who can have any woman he wants, and she becomes pregnant by him. When she returns to the slums, she is visibly pregnant and Picture Singh and Parvati convince Saleem that the two should be married to save her reputation. Saleem finally agrees and Parvati gives birth to a baby with huge.......ears! He is named Aadam after Saleem's grandfather and similar to Saleem's nose being able to smell everything, little Aadam can hear everything. He doesn't cry and doesn't make a sound and doesn't see the need to speak until he's nearly three years old. Saleem considers Aadam to be his son because, after all, he is the true grandson of his parents since he is Shiva's son.

But...no...we cannot have happiness. Right about now is when Indira Gandhi has sanctioned the slum cleansing and birth control initiatives. One morning Saleem, Parvati, Aadam and Picture Singh wake up to huge bulldozers plowing over their shanties. What's more...somehow Gandhi has found out about the children of midnight and their special powers. Because no one can have more powers than she could possibly have, she gives orders for top dog Shiva to round up Saleem so they can force him to name all the remaining Midnight's Children. Parvati is killed in the bulldozing and Picture Singh scoops up Aadam and escapes, but Saleem is sent to a prison and tortured until he names every one of the remaining children of midnight...including Shiva! Shiva, however, has already confessed to being one and has been voluntarily sterilized. The remaining children of midnight are sterilized, not just by snipping, but by removal of organs in case tubes ever grow back together. Then, horrifically, they are all also purged of their special powers. How this is done, Saleem doesn't know...but they all leave the prison sterile and no longer special. Rushdie makes many scathing comments, mostly round about and many satirical, about the cruel rule of Indira Gandhi. There is joy in the book when she is not "re-elected".

When Saleem is released, he reunites with Picture Singh and Aadam, who is now 21 months old. They have a small adventure, traveling to Bombay so Picture Singh can challenge another snake charmer who calls himself The Most Charming Man in the World. The challenge is completed, and Picture Singh is triumphant. At the victory dinner they are served the most delicious chutney that strikes a chord with Saleem. He recognizes the delicious taste! He finds out that the chutney is made in a pickle factory near his old home in Bombay where he lived with Ahmed, Amina and the Brass Monkey, before his finger was cut off. He takes Aadam to the pickle factory only to discover that the owner and chief chutney maker is the long lost nursemaid, Mary! She embraces Saleem and Aadam and he is once again with family. As the story is being told, we learn that Saleem, the narrator, is dying of a "bone crushing" disease; the same one that killed his grandfather Aadam Aziz. He's trying to get his story written before his 31st birthday when he feels he will die. In essence, there is no cure for the disease because it would appear that it is really the manifestation of all the tragic events in his life, combined with the same emptiness that his grandfather died from...the emptiness of not believing in a faith or a god. As Saleem writes, he also tells his tale to Padma, a female worker at the pickle factory and Saleem's caretaker for the last several months as he grew ill. She is in love with Saleem and after his story is completely finished and she knows every detail of his life, she still wants to marry him. So, Saleem agrees and they are married. On their honeymoon trip, the evening of his birthday, they get caught up in the celebration of India's independence, which is a huge celebration each year, and Saleem is crushed by the crowds...his bones mushing into dust.

Were all these events just in Saleem's head throughout his whole life, brought on by the expectations of him being something greater than he was because of his shared birthday with India? Or, did all the mystical, magical things really happen? The long book, with the intricate plot, colorful characters, tragic events, both real life and fiction, and the beautiful writing leaves me wondering still. :-)

Here's the passage where the prophet told Saleem's mother about his life:

"A son...such a son! A son who will never be older than his motherland---neither older nor younger. There will be two heads---but you shall see only one---there will be knees and a nose, a nose and knees. Newspapers praise him, two mothers raise him! Bicyclists love him---but, crowds will shove him! Sisters will weep; cobra will creep. Washing will hide him---voices will guide him! Friends mutilate him---blood will betray him! Spittoons will brain him---doctors will drain him---jungle will claim him---wizards reclaim him! Soldiers will try him---tyrants will fry him. He will have sons without having sons! He will be old before he is old! And he will die...before he is dead."

Of course...I couldn't blog about all of these things, but they all happened in one way or another. In another passage, Padma questions whether some of Saleem's story, especially about the gifted children, is due to his illness:

Reality can have metaphorical content; that does not make it less real. A thousand and one children were born; there were a thousand and one possibilities which had never been present in one place at one time before; and there were a thousand and one dead ends. Midnight's children can be made to represent many things, according to your point of view; they can be seen as the last throw of everything antiquated and retrogressive in our myth-ridden nation, whose defeat was entirely desirable in the contest of modernizing, twentieth-century economy; or as the true hope of freedom, which is now forever extinguished; but what they must not become is the bizarre creation of a rambling, diseased mind. No: illness is neither here nor there.

And lastly, every so often throughout the story, Saleem goes on a bit of a review of his life so far. This is an example of one of those ramblings right before he was being put to sleep to have his nose drained:

There was a washing-chest and a boy who sniffed to hard. His mother undressed and revealed a Black Mango. Voices came, which were not the voices of Archangels. A hand, deafening the left ear. And what grew best in the heat: fantasy, irrationality, lust. There was a clocktower refuge, and cheatery-in-class. And love in Bombay caused a bicycle-accident; horn-temples entered forcep-hollows, and five hundred and eighty-one children visited my head. Midnight's children: who may have been the embodiment of hope of freedom, who may also have been freaks-who-ought-to-be-finished-off. Parvati-the-wtich, most loyal of all, and Shiva, who became a principle of life. There was the question of purpose, and the debate between ideals and things. There were knees and nose and nose and knees. 

ok, I think that's enough for now. :-)

Finished: Moving On (McMurtry)...about 50 pages of it. :-) I really just wanted to skim through the nearly 800 page book and read the parts about Emma and Flap Horton, from Terms of Endearment. The entire long story is about Patsy, Emma's best friend...so there is practically more about Emma and Flap in this book than there was in Terms of Endearment. I tried a couple of times to see if I'd like to read that huge book all about Patsy, but I decided...nah...I have other books I want to get to. Anyway...I was so happy to read all the Emma and Flap parts. :-) Naturally, I won't be counting this as a book I've read!

And also...I've decided not to re-recap all the books I've read in 2012. As I read back on my blog posts, I finally started getting more and more detailed around Catch-22...so instead of rewriting everything, I'm just going to read the recaps to refresh my memory. :-)

Happy 2013! Here's to more and more reading. Perhaps I'll attempt some Top 100 Books lists since I conquered the Top 100 Authors list in 2012.

Finished: Leaving Cheyenne (McMurtry). A good, good book! I'm kind of on a McMurtry kick, I think. I might just read another one. :-) My brother was a big fan of McMurtry books, so almost all the McMurtry books I have are his books that I went and packed up after he died. I remember my brother telling me that McMurtry's books continued characters from book to book at times, and I'm seeing that now. It's just so very surreal to read books that belonged to my brother.

Anyway, I really enjoyed this book! It's just a simple story about Gid (short for Gideon), Johnny and Molly...three "kids" (they're around 18 or 19 when we meet them) who are in each other's lives for over forty years. They live in north Texas, Gid on his father's nice ranch, Johnny as a cowhand working different ranches, and Molly on her father's small farm. Gid and Johnny are best friends, and are both in love with Molly, and Molly, in her own way, is in love with both of them. However, Molly is also crazy about oil-rigger, Eddie, and despite Gid asking her month after month, and year after year to marry him, she goes off and marries Eddie. Eddie is pretty much a low-life drunk, like Molly's own father, and he mistreats her terribly. However, she sticks with him. She doesn't give up sleeping with Johnny and Gid throughout the years. She decides first off that she wants to have a child by Gid while married to Eddie, so she does. And, then, she decides to have a child by Johnny while married to Eddie. Eddie is none the wiser, especially when he dies in an oil rig accident before the children (two boys) can get old enough to look like their biological fathers. In the meantime, Gid had gone ahead and married "the only other available girl in town", Mabel. He was so unhappy with her, but he'd never leave her to go and be happy with Molly. Nope...he just kept up his intimate relationship with Molly into his 40's.

I really liked Gid's father in the story. He was raising Gid alone since his mother died, and trying to instill in him the love for owning and operating the ranch and not just living off of cowhand wages like his best friend Johnny did. It was so sad when Gid's father died. :-( Anyway, Gid did learn to take responsibility for the ranch...after he and Johnny went off and had a few adventures in their younger years! One or the other of them always ended back up at Molly's after awhile after Eddie died.

The book itself is told in three parts. From Gid's point of view, we see the earlier courtship and young 20's years of the trio...all the way up to Molly marrying Eddie, Gid marrying Mabel, Johnny coming to work on Gid's ranch, Gid's father dying, and Molly becoming pregnant by Gid. Then, part two is told from Molly's point of view and they're all now in their 40's. Johnny and Gid practically take turns being with Molly...but the biggest news is that both of her sons, Jimmy, who is Gid's son and Joe, who is Johnny's son, have both been killed in "the war". It's so sad. :-( As teenagers, she'd told them both who their real fathers were, and Joe had taken it really well and had a good relationship with Johnny. However, Jimmy had hated her for it and would never have any kind of a relationship with Gid. He went off to the war never intending to come back even if he made it through. After Jimmy dies, Gid declares to Molly that it's wrong for them to be intimate how they've been all these years while he's married to Mabel (who doesn't really love Gib, nor he her) and he swears off that part of their relationship. I think his resolve lasts ten years. The third part of the book is narrated by the free-spirited Johnny who has now been working for Gid for nearly 40 years. They are in their late 60's by now and still going strong doing all the ranch work, and both just as stubborn as ever! They still both see Molly, and Gid is finally thinking of leaving Mabel for Molly, but one of the things holding him back is knowing that if he and Molly got to living together for real, then that would actually leave Johnny out of the picture. Anyway...it becomes a mute point when Gid slips fixing a windmill and dies of a blood clot.

The three have been so close for all these years that Molly and Johnny aren't sure what to do with themselves, but both spend time reminiscing and know that after all, life goes on. A good book and I could just hear the Texas twang whenever any of them spoke! :-)