Wherever You Go Read-along: Part 2 (Pages 126-253)

Welcome to the second and final discussion of Wherever You Go by Joan Leegant, which is part of the read-along I’m co-hosting with Carrie at Books and Movies. If you missed them, please go back and read the part 1 discussion and Joan’s guest post. Also, don’t forget to submit your questions for Joan to Carrie as soon as possible at nnjmom at yahoo dot com. Joan will be answering these questions on Carrie’s blog on November 5.

I apologize for the delay in posting this discussion. I mismanaged my time and then got stuck in the crazy snowstorm battering the Northeastern United States—I just got home last night and was too exhausted to finish this post before today. Anyway, without further ado, here are some of my thoughts...

Note that the rest of this post contains major spoilers!

I was struck by the many parallels in Aaron and Mark’s stories: they were both lost as young men; they both had very difficult relationships with their fathers; they both turned to religion to save themselves. They even both changed their hair to mark turning points in their lives: Aaron shaves his head to show his commitment to Adamah; while Mark shaves off his beard to signify his loss of faith. And yet, their journeys go in very different directions (even as the two men meet): Mark’s leads him towards an opening up of possibilities, a chance to start again, meaningful work and love, whereas Aaron’s leads to death and despair. (Considering that he wasn’t going to be punished in any traditional sense for his crime, I can’t think of a much worse fate for Aaron that to have to remain under his parents’ supervision indefinitely.) The obvious difference between their journeys is the direction they are going in during the course of the book: Mark moves away from rigid religious views (he doesn’t, in fact, completely lose his faith, but rather loosens his grip on specific rituals of faith), which leads directly to greater happiness, whereas Aaron’s views become more fanatical—the God he professes to believes in is “the fiery God of the Hebrews who . . . drowned the Egyptians and killed all their firstborn and incinerated the priests of Baal and ordered the slaughter of thousands whenever they got in the Israelites’ way” (p. 85). Did you notice this too? What are your thoughts about this? What did you think of what happened to Aaron?

I was initially a bit disappointed that we didn’t get to find out more about Dena and what motivated her choices, but in the end, I think this really worked in the context of this novel: the reader doesn’t find out more because Yona doesn’t (which totally makes sense). However, I’m curious: Why do you think that Dena did what Yona asked her to, even though Dena refused to forgive her sister? I think Dena couldn’t forgive Yona without reassessing some of her own life choices; however, something of what Yona said got through. (And who knows what Dena will do in the future: maybe she will eventually soften her position and forgive her sister.) What are your thoughts about this?

Finally, my favourite aspect of the novel was how Joan used the quote from the Talmud, Whoever saves one life, it’s as if he’s saved an entire world. (An alternate translation is He who saves one life saves the world entire.) This is the argument Yona uses to convince her sister to save Mark Greengrass, and it’s also the explanation the doctor gives to Mark’s parents for why he (Mark) hadn’t run from the explosion (since Mark can’t remember). This moved me to tears: Because how often does a person have the opportunity to save an entire world? (p. 252).

There is so much more I could say about this book, but I’ll stop here for now. Let me know what you thought in the comments (about my questions or any other aspect of the story), and I’ll be sure to comment back!

Brogan’s Review: Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Hmm, it seems like the only person writing reviews for my blog these days is my sister Brogan! Here’s another one for you while I’m away...

I find myself not wanting to say anything critical about Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie because it’s so good, and not only is it a good book, but it’s also an important one. The story is set in Nigeria in the sixties and alternates between “the early sixties” and “the late sixties.” It begins by introducing the main characters, Olanna and Kainene, middle-class twin sisters, Olanna with a revolutionary bent and Kainene with a more business orientation. Olanna has a lover, Odenigbo, who is a university professor; Kainene’s lover is a white man from England, one of the few Westerners who has come to Nigeria not to pillage the country but to try to understand it (he is interested in the historical art of the area). Then there’s Ugwu, Olanna and Odenigbo’s household servant, a poor boy from an outlying village who is trying to make his way (preferably up) in the world.

Enter civil war.

The power of this book for me was twofold: one, it totally transported me to another world, a world of jollof rice, houseboys, and multiple languages and ethnic groups (Igbo, Yoruba, English, Fulani and a number of others); and two, despite their obvious differences at the outset, I saw how similar middle-class Nigerian life could be to middle-class North American life, and therefore as I read about the anomie of war I could imagine and dread my own life being so transformed. This is the greatest strength of Half of a Yellow Sun: it makes you care about people who live half a world away, people whose lives are entwined in our own, given that so many resources that support our middle-class lifestyle come from Africa.

I cared deeply about the characters, who are strong, uncompromising and interesting. When Olanna described being afraid of who would die next, I can only say that I shared her fear.

Knowing that this novel is based on actual events made me want to learn more about the history of Nigeria and the struggle for an independent Biafra. (Adichie gives free reign to a number of political discussions in the book, but since she’s faithful to actual conversations, people do not reference their current political situation with the in-depth background information that would have been helpful to someone like me, who knew nothing about the political history of the area and had only a sketchy knowledge of international politics at that time.)

One thing this book made clear was that in such wars, it is not the side with the most legitimacy that wins, or the side with the deepest conviction among its supporters—it is rather the side with the backing of Western powers (and therefore access to weapons), a support that can depend on the vagaries of international relations at the time. But also, that in war there is no “good side,” and the tools of war are brutality on both sides. The war in Nigeria against secessionist Biafra was the first conflict in which mass starvation was deliberately used as a weapon of war (against the Biafrans).

My questions or slight detractions about the book are more on the personal, character level. For instance, one of the women, Kainene, is said to be ugly and is frequently compared to her beautiful sister (by other characters) because they are twins. As a reader, I cared about Kainene’s ugliness, about how this single fact of her life (which she could do nothing about) affected her and how she reacted to it with wryness and sarcasm. However, I also didn’t quite understand it—Adichie writes of “beautiful” and “ugly” as if they are absolute and universal, as objective as describing one person’s eyes as brown and another’s as blue. But beauty is not an objective quality so I found myself wondering what was ugly about Kainene? Adichie only ever describes this ugliness in the vaguest of terms, using words such as “androgynous” and “skinny”—she gives us no details. (She gives no details as to the beautiful woman’s looks either but somehow this mattered less.) Also, both Western and Nigerian men find Kainene unattractive, which, given that standards of beauty are culturally specific, made me wonder further: what is it about this woman’s appearance that so sets her apart? Because Adichie doesn’t explore these details, it seemed to me that she used Kainene’s ugliness as a device and in that way I felt the telling wasn’t compassionate. Casting Kainene as ugly seemed like an idea imposed on the character rather than an organic part of her reality, which I hope would have led to a more sensitive and complete exploration of that reality.

Overall, Half of a Yellow Sun is a phenomenal book. Part love story, part examination of war, it doesn’t evade subtleties (it’s not because you are surrounded by shelling that you know for sure whether you’ve chosen the right lover), nor does it turn away from looking at the crassness of humanity at its worst—which is war—and how ordinary people live their lives in the midst of it.
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Other reviews:

Book Chatter • Caribousmom • Musings of a Bookish Kitty • pages turned • she reads novels • SmallWorld Reads • The Magic Lasso
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Similar Covers: Dummies + Bird Cage

Here’s another collection I’ve been gathering for a while: books with a dressmaker’s dummy on the cover.

First, the yellowy beige ones: The Little Giant of Aberdeen County by Tiffany Baker, Floor Sample by Julia Cameron and A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving...

Next, the more colourful ones: She’s Come Undone by Wally Lamb, The Thoughtful Dresser by Linda Grant and Self-Help by Lorrie Moore...

And finally, a matching twosome: De water methode man (the Dutch translation of The Water-Method Man) by John Irving and Die Eisheilige (The Spring Snow Storm) by Susanne Mischke (a German writer whose books don’t seem to have been translated into English).

Interestingly enough, Die Eisheilige has been published with another cover, which also has a lookalike: A Doll’s House: York Notes by Henrik Ibsen.

I can’t say I’m particularly drawn to any of these covers, though I did enjoy The Little Giant of Aberdeen County (read my review)!

Really Random Tuesday: The ABCs of Me

I saw this meme on Marie’s blog, Daisy’s Book Journal (she grabbed it from Cathy at Kittling: Books) and thought it would make a perfect Really Random Tuesday post for you while I’m away at Kripalu (!) for the week. So here goes...

Age: 41

Bed size: Queen

Chore you hate: Pretty much any type of housework, though cleaning the toilet probably ranks lowest (thanks to Mr. B, it’s not something I do very often!)

Dogs: Nope. I’m a cat person. I miss my Thelma every day, but I’m happy to share my life (and my lap) with Cairo.

Essential start to your day: After getting out of bed? Peeing is first on the list, followed soon after by feeding the cat.

Favourite colours: Orange and red

Gold or silver: Silver, though I wear a gold opal ring that used to belong to my nana

Height: 5’5’’

Instruments you play(ed): Piano, once upon a time, long long ago. I also learned to play a djembe, but I’m shy about playing in front of anybody.

Job title: Freelance translator (French to English)

Kids: None

Live: Montreal

Mother’s name: Ann (that’s where the “annschild” comes from in my username)

Nicknames: None. (The only nickname I know of for Avis is Ave, which is my aunt’s name.)

Overnight hospital stays: Can’t remember any.

Pet peeves: Books that contain misused words, sloppy spelling

Quote from a movie: “Yummy yummy!” (from Gosford Park directed by Robert Altman: the Maggie Smith character says it in anticipation of breakfast in bed at Gosford Park)

Right- or left-handed: Right

Siblings: Two younger sisters

Time you wake up: Do I have to answer this question? 9-ish on weekdays. (Thank goodness I work from home.)

Underwear: What about it? (Yes, I wear underwear, if anybody really wants to know.)

Vegetable you hate: Mushrooms (except for portabellas and maybe porcini—I’m undecided about those), though I’m not sure mushrooms qualify as vegetables. Cabbage. Brussel sprouts. Raw tomatoes and onions (cooked are fine).

What makes you run late: Life

X-rays you’ve had: Dental

Yummy food that you make: Vegetarian carbonara (Mr. B and I made up the recipe)

Zoo animal: Giraffe, though zoos make me feel sad. (If we’re talking exotic animals in general, I’d have to go with the blue-footed booby!)

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Really Random Tuesday is hosted by Suko at Suko’s Notebook. Feel free to join in, copy the button and link back to Suko’s blog.

The blue-footed booby pic is courtesy of Hans Stieglitz via the Wikimedia Commons site. It is under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 licence.

Mailbox Monday (October 24): McGill Bookfair Loot

Mailbox Monday is a gathering place for readers to share the books they received during the previous week. Warning: MM can lead to envy, toppling TBR piles and huge wish lists! Mailbox Monday, which was started by Marcia (who now blogs at A girl and her books) is on blog tour—this month, it’s hosted by Serena at Savvy Verse & Wit.

As I mentioned in last week’s post, the McGill Book Fair was on this past week and I came home with a modest pile of books (for $2 to $4 each):

The books are:

• Baker Towers by Jennifer Haigh
• The Good Husband of Zebra Drive by Alexander McCall Smith
• A Door into Ocean by Joan Slonczewski
• An Education by Lynn Barber
• Affinity by Sarah Waters
• Eve Green by Susan Fletcher
  

I now own the first nine books in the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency series (but have only read the first three). I’m also the proud owner of no fewer than four copies of A Door into Ocean. (The Women’s Press edition is by far my favourite and this copy is in much better shape than the other copy I own, so it made sense to me to “replace” it for only $2—not that I plan of getting rid of the first copy!)

What did you find in your mailbox this past week? For other Mailbox Monday posts, head over to Savvy Verse & Wit.

Telling the Truth While Making Things Up: Guest Post by Joan Leegant, Author of Wherever You Go

I’m thrilled to be able to offer you this guest post by Joan Leegant, author of Wherever You Go, as part of the Wherever You Go read-along that I’m co-hosting this month with Carrie from Books and Movies. After watching Joan’s videos, I sent her the following message: “I’m curious about your writing process. In one of your videos, you mention that you don’t pre-plan your writing (that you are discovering how the story unfolds as you write it) and I wonder how that works when you’re writing about current and politically charged events. Do you worry about getting it ‘right’? What kind of research do you do?” This is what Joan sent me as a reply.
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Writing about something that’s based in fact or is topical—what some call “ripped from the headlines”—can pose unusual challenges for a fiction writer. You’re writing about an event that’s actually happened (as Jim Shepard does in his terrific story “Love and Hydrogen,” which takes place in 1937 on the doomed Hindenburg airship) or set amid a real political conflict (like Tim O’Brien’s collection about American soldiers in Vietnam, The Things They Carried), and yet you’re also making things up. How does one go about this? How close to the “facts” must one stay? Are there dangers in sticking too closely to the facts? And is it harder if your story is set in 2011 rather than forty or seventy years ago?

Naturally, you have to get your facts straight. For my novel Wherever You Go, I needed to have a pretty thorough understanding of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and of the phenomenon of Jewish political extremism in particular. I needed to have an ear for the rhetoric of the radical settlers and a solid grasp of Israeli society. Fortunately, most of that was readily accessible to me. Since 2007 I’ve lived in Israel part of each year; for decades prior, I was a close observer of the country, following a three-year stint in Jerusalem in the late 1970s.

Beyond that, writing a novel with topical elements isn’t all that different from writing any other novel. Always, your characters have to be believable. Their emotions and behaviors have to ring true; otherwise your reader will set aside the book and not go along with the pact you make with them: I will tell you an invented story, but through it I’m going to reveal the truth. You also have to get the details right. Otherwise the reader is catapulted out of the book, thinking, No, it’s not like that. This writer doesn’t speak with authority. Some years ago, I was at an artist colony and read aloud a part of a work-in-progress. The excerpt mentioned an M-5 bus from Queens, NY to Manhattan. At the conclusion of the reading, a painter from New York said, “Your story is good. But there are no buses from Queens to New York with an M. They’re all Q.” My mistake ruined the flow for this reader. Needless to say, I fixed the error. For a scene in Wherever You Go involving an explosion, I spent hours on the Web researching how to make a bomb (I’m still waiting for the FBI to show up at my door).

How much of what I wrote in Wherever You Go is factually true and how much did I make up? What’s true is that extremist groups exist in Israeli society and operate on the West Bank; it’s also true that some Americans are active in these groups. Also true are the physical descriptions: the thousands of birds dotting the sky over Jerusalem at dusk; the security questioning at Ben-Gurion Airport; what it’s like to be in a taxi stuck in traffic when the bomb robot comes to dismantle a suspicious object.

What I made up are the personal stories I tell in Wherever You Go. For instance, there is a violent incident at the heart of the book that I invented. Could it have taken place? Yes, though I don’t know that such an event ever actually occurred. Likewise the characters. I made them up, they aren’t composites of people I know, but there certainly could be a troubled kid like Aaron Blinder, a religious seeker like Mark Greenglass, a woman trying to forgive herself and reconcile with her sister like Yona Stern. I know this, as a writer, from a combination of observation, research, and intuition.

Sometimes being too faithful to the facts can straitjacket your storytelling. I waited to visit several West Bank settlements until the draft was done so that my imagination could have free reign; only when it was done did I go there to check for accuracy and tweak some small details. Writers of autobiographical fiction struggle with this all the time. Just because something happened in real life doesn’t mean it makes for good fiction.

You can probably play a little faster and looser with the facts if your story is set in the past rather than the present. If Jim Shepard made an error describing the defective cooling system of the Hindenburg (which probably caused the fire that caused it to explode), there aren’t a lot of readers who’d know the difference. But you still have to be careful. You need the reader to feel she’s in good hands and that you know what you’re talking about. One novelist, John Dufresne, titled his book on craft The Lie That Tells a Truth. That’s the fiction writer’s goal: to tell the truth. But you get there by way of believable fabrication.
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Have you ever had the thought, while reading a novel: “No, it’s not like that. This writer doesn’t speak with authority.” (I can think of one or two examples right off!) What about the opposite, when you feel sure that a book is telling you the truth, even though it’s fiction? (I felt that way about The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy, for example, and Blackout/All Clear by Connie Willis, even though that’s historical fiction wrapped in science fiction.) Thank you, Joan, for this thoughtful post!

For more about Joan and her work, including more guest posts, please visit www.joanleegant.com.

Similar Covers: Female Heads in Silhouette

I’ve been noticing a cover trend recently: female heads in silhouette, often against a single-colour background. Here’s my collection so far (over half of which were published this year), but I’m sure there are others out there.

First, Bride of New France by Suzanne Desrochers (Penguin, Jan 2011), Clara and Mr. Tiffany by Susan Vreeland (Random House, Jan 2011) and The Girl Who Could Silence the Wind by Meg Medina (Candlewick, 2012), which are busier than most of these covers...

Next, Little Bee by Chris Cleave (Simon & Schuster, 2009), 32 Candles by Ernessa T. Carter (Harper Collins, 2010) and Incendiary* by Chris Cleave (Simon & Schuster, Jan 2011)...

Then, Lies by Enrique de Hériz (Orion Publishing, 2007) and The Whole Truth by Kit Pearson (Harper Collins Canada, Aug 2011)...

And finally, The Story of Beautiful Girl by Rachel Simon (Hachette, May 2011) and Marion Woodman: Dancing in the Flames, a movie directed by Adam Greydon Reid (2009).

What do you think of these covers? Do they grab you? Have you spotted any others that would fit in this collection? Let me know and I’ll add them!

Edited to add:

I just added The Girl Who Could Silence the Wind to this post (spotted over at The Book Smugglers).

*It feels like it’s cheating a bit to include both titles by Chris Cleave (since the second one is obviously inspired by the first), but those three covers look so pretty together that I couldn’t resist!

Mailbox Monday (October 17)

Mailbox Monday is a gathering place for readers to share the books they received during the previous week. Warning: MM can lead to envy, toppling TBR piles and huge wish lists! Mailbox Monday, which was started by Marcia (who now blogs at A girl and her books) is on blog tour—this month, it’s hosted by Serena at Savvy Verse & Wit.

October is Book Fair Month in my world, although I won’t be going to the Quebec City Women’s Club Book Fair in Quebec City this year. (The McGill Book Fair starts tomorrow and I’ll be there!) To make up for missing the one in Quebec City, I attended the Concordia Used Book Fair this year, although I was only there for the last hour on the second (and last) day. I still managed to score three books I wanted:

• Alone! Alone!: Lives of Some Outsider Women by Rosemary Dinnage
• Jane and the Barque of Frailty by Stephanie Barron
• This Body of Death by Elizabeth George

I also received two books I’d ordered this week:

• Carnival Evening: New and Selected Poems 1968-1998 by Linda Pastan
• The Dance of Fear: Rising Above Anxiety, Fear, and Shame to Be Your Best and Bravest Self by Harriet Lerner

And I forgot to mention that I received an autographed copy of The Glimpse Traveler by Marianne Boruch from the publisher, Indiana University Press. They had previously sent me a galley copy to review, so I’m happy to have a final copy that’s autographed no less! (Read my review.)

What did you find in your mailbox this past week? For other Mailbox Monday posts, head over to Savvy Verse & Wit.

Wherever You Go Read-along: Part 1 (Pages 3-126)

If you’re participating in the Wherever You Go read-along that Carrie and I are co-hosting this month, don’t forget that this week’s discussion (about the first half of the book) is happening over on Carrie’s blog, Books and Movies. Since this book is short, we’ve decided to post discussions only twice, so the final discussion will take place here on October 29. It’s also not to late to join us—if you’re interested, sign up here.

Author Joan Leegant will be guest posting on my blog next Saturday and answering questions on Carrie’s blog on November 5. So keep track of your questions for Joan and email them to Carrie at nnjmom at yahoo dot com. The deadline for questions is October 31.

Similar Covers: More Girls

I’m not doing too well with reviewing these days, as I’m sure you’ve noticed, but you can count on me for your weekly dose of similar covers! Here are four sets of doubles for you.

First, there’s Seventeeth Summer by Maureen Daly (Simon Pulse, 1985) and Ein süßer Sommer (A Sweet Summer) by Petra Hammesfahr (Rowohlt Taschenbuch Verla, 2004)...

Next, there’s Stop Pretending: What Happened When My Big Sister Went Crazy by Sonya Sones (HarperTeen, 2001) and White Death by Tim Vicary (Oxford University Press, 2008)...

Then there’s Children’s Corner: Debussy performed by the Québec Symphony Orchestra (2007) and Up from the Blue by Susan Henderson (Harper, 2010)...

And finally there’s Whisper (the Italian translation of Lament) by Maggie Stiefvater (Fanucci, Feb 2011) and The Twisted Thread by Charlotte Bacon (Hyperion, Jun 2011)!

None of these covers grabs me in a big way, though I like Seventeenth Summer well enough and the freckly girl on Up from the Blue is super cute and The Twisted Thread cover (along with the title) is quite intriguing. (How’s that for a run-on sentence?) Oh, and I dislike both covers with the girl at the window. What do you think?