The Cellist of Sarajevo

Isn't it disappointing when you've been looking forward to reading a book only to discover it's not that good once you finally read it? 

Despite having The Cellist of Sarajevo on my "To Be Read" list for several years, I had no idea that this story was based on a real person until I googled the book. After a mortar attack killed 22 people waiting for food in a downtown Sarajevo marketplace in 1992, the cellist, Vedran Smailović, became famous for playing Albinoni's Adagio in G Minor (a fittingly haunting and lamentable piece of music) for twenty-two days straight at the site of the attack. He did this under the threat of snipers. He would also play in ruined buildings around Sarajevo and during funerals. 

I won't go so far as to say there is nothing to be gained from reading this book. It was easy enough to follow and I did learn a bit about the Siege of Sarajevo, but getting through it was a slog because the writing had the unmistakable tang of a creative writer desperate to compose something meaningful & over-conscious of his craft. The phrase, “the men on the hills” seemed to appear on every page and there was too much pontificating on death and war. The unceasing silent soliloquies of the three main characters were meant to be thought provoking, but they were so artlessly done that they fell as flat as their own undeveloped characters. Overall, this is a short book that never seems to end. The real story of the Cellist of Sarajevo, Vedran Smailović, is incredibly inspiring. The fictional account is not.

The death knell of this book really rang though when I read that Smailović, who survived the siege and is now living in Ireland, felt incredibly angry when he found out about it. He said, "How is it possible? They steal my name and identity. Nobody can take the rights to that from me. It's quite clear that it is me in the book ... I expect damages for what they have done, an apology and compensation." I was surprised that Galloway undertook to write about Smailović without asking permission. I find it very disrespectful. He has capitalized on Smailović's story; a story Smailović should have been allowed to tell in his own time and way, if that is what he wanted to do. 

This article gives a good rundown of the controversy. It was written ten years ago though and I can't find any information about how things were finally resolved. I'm guessing they never were. 

Jane of Lantern Hill

Every time I read a new L.M. Montgomery book I’m amazed at her seemingly infinite powers of characterization. Montgomery’s female characters may all spring from the same well of youthful optimism, but they are always unique individuals.

Jane of Lantern Hill begins on a cold day in Toronto. Jane lives with her hard-as-steel grandmother, crusty Aunt, and her mother, who is quite pretty and about as substantial as a butterfly wing. Smothered by her surroundings, Jane is always hoping that someone will let her do something useful. She is the type of girl who would rather have an old doll to take care of than a brand new one to display. Jane’s life is turned upside down when she finds out that the father she thought was dead is actually alive and living on Prince Edward Island. Her world changes forever when he writes that he wants her to come stay with him for the summer.

Why do I love Jane so much? Probably because I’m more of a Jane than an Anne Shirley, whom I love, but whose bright popularity and inability to stop talking are a bit foreign to my own personality. Jane is my kindred spirit. She’s quiet, but undaunted by those who would poison her with their cynicism. Jane sees the joy in taking care of a home, in houses with lights glowing from the windows, in geraniums in her windowsill, and special quilts tucked up on all the beds. She loves her garden and vows to bake the perfect pie. Of course, in an old maid such as myself, these attributes seem, well, old maidenly, but in a young girl there is a sweetness and wonder in all her accomplishments on Lantern Hill.

“There was a tangle of sunbeams on the bare white floor. They could see the maple wood through the east window, the gulf and the pond and the dunes through the north, the harbor through the west. Winds of the salt seas were blowing in. Swallows were swooping through the evening air. Everything she looked at belonged to dad and her. She was mistress of this house . . . her right there was none to dispute.”

It’s pure L.M. Montgomery magic. Lest you think Jane is just a homebody, she does have her fair share of adventures. I won’t ruin those for you though because I’m certain you need to read this for yourself!

Find the book here: Amazon

Your Three-Year-Old: Friend or Enemy

Alternatively helpful and useless, Your Three-Year-Old: Friend or Enemy, comforted me even while it made me scratch my head in bewilderment.

The first chapter, “Characteristics of the Age,” contained the best information. In it, the authors explained about the stages of equilibrium and disequilibrium that a child goes through. I found this comforting, as my 3 ½ - year -old is definitely in a stage of disequilibrium. “Your child is not your enemy. It is not you against him” (12), the authors, in emphasizing italics, remind their readers. So the next time your child throws cereal all over your freshly vacuumed floor, and then steps in it to grind it a little further into the carpet (and your soul), repeat this to yourself: “you are not my enemy.” It might help.

There were several things that were downright unhelpful or just so common sense you cringe to think that some parents are actually asking such questions (no, mom, your child is not a “mental crackup” because she wants to use her left hand for things). The chapter on the three-year-old birthday party didn’t seem to offer much. Let me tell you, there’s only one schedule for a child’s birthday party: chaos, pure uninhibited sugar high chaos from start to finish.

Their advice for hard to handle children often consisted of getting a babysitter or sending your child to day care so you don’t have to deal with them. “Day care when necessary can reduce the time you will need to spend together” (12). True, but not very helpful for the modern stay-at-home mom on a budget. If that doesn’t work for you, there’s always the other type of babysitter: “the television can be your friend. Wisely used, it can keep a child happy, well behaved and out of difficulty for long periods” (30). Here’s your golden ticket to guilt-free screen time for your children!

The letters from disgruntled parents at the end and the authors masterful, yet slightly insulting, advice was a real goldmine. One mother gave her child a toy clown and then let him watch a violent show on TV with clowns in it. Much to her surprise, he suddenly became afraid of his clown. She asked if maybe she should “burn the clown before his eyes” or whether they should take the toy clown on vacation or leave it behind. The authors opened up their response with the understatement of the year, “You seem to have made several mistakes.”

Find the book here: Amazon

The Hired Girl

I LOVED this book. My mom recommended and loaned it to me and I’m so glad she did. Reading The Hired Girl was like experiencing Anne of Green Gables for the first time. It was that good.

After her mother’s passing, Joan Skraggs seems destined for a life of drudgery on her family’s Pennsylvania farm. Forbidden by her embittered father from continuing her education, Joan must work tirelessly to take care of her three older brothers and emotionally abusive father. Cooking, laundry, ironing, scrubbing the floor, taking care of the chickens, cleaning out the privy … she does it all. Seeking a better life for herself and with the dream of someday obtaining an education and becoming a teacher, at 14 Joan runs away from home to become a hired girl. She finds employment in a Jewish household (Joan is Catholic), and what follows is a charming coming of age story set in early twentieth century Baltimore.

Written in journal format, the tone of this novel reminded me a lot of Daddy-Long-Legs. Joan’s voice is original and personable.

“I wish I was a hired girl. Of course, I’d rather be a schoolteacher. But I bet those hired girls – foreigners, most of them – don’t work a lick harder than I do, and they get paid six dollars a week. And here I am, without a penny to call my own” (39).

Bookish girls and women who were once bookish girls will relate to Joan’s love for literature, her active imagination, and the way she romanticizes her own life and the lives of others. Not surprisingly, this leads to some awkward situations and personal disasters as she discovers that life doesn’t always mirror art in the way one would expect. I loved Joan Skraggs. She was feisty, optimistic, loveable, witty, clumsy, intelligent, and in turns mature for her age and then very much a naive fourteen year-old. She was real.

What impressed me the most about this book though was how it dealt with the topic of religion. I learned a lot about Jewish customs, but it also touched on religious persecution and how people who hold different, but very strong religious beliefs, can come to understand and love one another.

Find the book here: Amazon

The Underground Railroad

I can’t say I enjoyed this novel. Much like Holocaust fiction, you really can’t enjoy slave narratives (especially ones bent on exposing every cruelty imagined). But I didn’t dislike this novel either. Ripe with metaphor and reimagined horrors perpetuated against African Americans, it kept me interested with its strange mixture of fact and fiction.

Whitehead’s novel reconfirmed my childhood misconception that the underground railroad contained a real train that ran underground. The reader is conveyed through a network of dark tunnels and iron tracks, carried on rickety engines with strange conductors. We accompany Cora, the protagonist and runaway slave, whose fierce desire to run to freedom is awakened when the cruelties, both present and anticipated, of the Georgia plantation she is on become heavier than the fear of capture and torture. Early in her journey on the railroad, Cora is told that if she “look[s] outside while [she] speed[s] through, [she’ll] find the true face of America.” It doesn’t take a skilled English major to interpret this metaphor, which is repeated throughout the story. The only light Cora ever sees in the tunnel is when she comes to the end of it. What lies beneath, what’s in the heart of America, is only darkness.

This novel was bleak. Whitehead reminds the reader that even though slaves can escape, memory will never allow them to truly break the bonds of their past. The white people are generally depicted with an overinflated love for cruelty and barbarianism. Even the white people who help convey Cora to different stops on the railroad or hide her at their own peril are not shown in an advantageous light. I found his depiction of Ethel particularly degrading. “No one was spared, regardless of the shape of their dreams or the color of their skin” (216).

In one memorable scene, Cora is hired to work as an actor in a display for a Museum of Natural History. As she participates in this pantomime of the slave experience, Cora begins to rebel against the sneering faces that scowl and mock her by staring back at the crowd, “her eyes, unwavering and fierce,” (125) until the person she has chosen to give “the evil eye” turns away from her. “They always broke, the people, not expecting this weird attack, staggering back or looking at the floor or forcing their companions to pull them away. It was a fine lesson, Cora thought, to learn that the slave, the African in your midst, is looking at you, too” (126). Black history has been stolen by white narrators and Whitehead aims to take it back.

This novel was thought provoking and certainly worth reading, but Whitehead’s emphasis on violence often seemed indulgent, as though the only way to drive his point home was to make a spectacle of horror. The fact that this novel won the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for fiction is a testament to the current racial tensions in our country. While I didn’t agree with all of Whitehead’s racial conclusions, the truth of this statement is what I will take away from my reading:

“All I truly know is that we rise and fall as one, one colored family living next door to one white family. We may not know the way through the forest, but we can pick each other up when we fall, and we will arrive together” (286).

Find the book here: Amazon

Journey to the River Sea

The Amazon is a magical place, filled with butterflies the size of birds, fragrant orchids, wondrous medicinal plants, and friendly Indians who are happy to see you, as long as you’re nice to them and show them you’re there to learn, not judge. Humidity, mosquito bites and malaria, cannibals, piranhas, poison dart frogs, boas, vipers, and anacondas are only to be feared if you’re a stodgy, pudding loving Anglophile who doesn’t properly appreciate the Amazon.

While certainly not realistic, Journey to the River Sea is enchanting. The sentiment that “children must lead big lives,” is at the heart of this story. Ibbotson makes you believe that pre-teens are capable of doing things better than most adults and that an enlightened parent would actually let their child sail down the Amazon, provided they took their mathematics textbook with them and continued to brush their teeth.

Find the book here: Amazon

The Hummingbird's Daughter

Set in pre-revolutionary Mexico, The Hummingbird’s Daughter, is an absorbing and richly imagined tale of the little known “Saint of Cabora,” Teresita Urrea. Teresita had many sobriquets, but my favorite is the brazenly dramatic: “Mexico’s Joan of Arc.”

This article in True West, “The Most Dangerous Girl in Mexico,” gives a brief but thorough summary of her life.

Teresita is a distant relative of the author, Luis Alberto Urrea, which probably explains why he invested 20 years of his life learning about hers. A lot of times such a well-researched book feels like a summary of the author’s notes, as if they tried to pack every little thing they learned about their topic into their novel. Happily, that's not the case here. Written in the style of magical realism, Urrea’s novel deftly carries the reader through a world where the possible and the impossible are so intertwined that you can’t help but believe, if only for the duration of the narrative, that it all makes sense. In the process, you learn about vaqueros, shamanic healers, desert landscapes, and Yaqui and Mayo cultural history. There is a lot of heart, history, and humor in this novel, but also violence and some sexual content. While I think this novel is beautiful, heartbreaking, and overall very enjoyable, you might want to steer clear of it if that’s not something you want included in your reading.