THE FOUR WINDS by Kristin Hannah

 

What a gift this woman has for writing and how prolific. She is not bound by any particular geographical setting, or historical time frame, somehow able to make a memorable and gripping story out of anything. Maybe her next novel will be set in space! At the core of her novels are one or two strong, determined, intelligent and resourceful female characters, faced with circumstances that require them to dig very deep to overcome. This novel was finished during the first half of 2020, many people having enormous challenges to overcome. Reading this, or any Kristin Hannah novel, will, I am sure and hope, be hugely relatable to readers.

Elsa lives with her parents in a small town in Texas. It is early 1930s. Elsa is the ugly duckling in her family and treated as such. Despite being intelligent and self aware, she sees little future for herself in this town, dreaming of being able to leave and make something of herself. But she has spirit, and in a rare show of defiance she meets a local boy, the inevitable happens, and before she knows it she is Elsa Martinelli, banished by her family, and now living on a farm with her in laws. Not a good start you might think and what else can go wrong. Drought is what goes wrong, then the Great Depression. There is plenty of information on line about this time in US history, the dust storms, the havoc wrecked on the rural economies, the lack of help from federal agencies, and the mass migrations from these devastated and destroyed rural areas westwards to California. Life is no picnic when these refugees finally make it to the promised land with nowhere to live, no jobs, enormous prejudice, predatory employers - the complete powerlessness and hopelessness that these hardworking people find themselves in.

Elsa makes the monumental decision to follow others to California, taking her children, leaving her in-laws. The journey itself is hazardous, but nothing compared to what awaits them when they finally arrive in California. Elsa is an amazing woman, the safety and future of her children her driving force in all decisions and actions she takes. That defiance and burst of character in her teens explodes out of her as she tries to make a better life for her small family. 

This is gripping stuff, not only for the story line, but also for the author's vividness of writing - the lives of the farmers, how the dust storms and drought devastate the farms and crops, how starvation affects the body and the mind. And yet that instinct for survival just keeps on driving. Her imagery of the camps that the migrants find themselves living in, the pathetic and hopeless search for jobs, food, medical care. The lack of kindness, care and humanity from the people of California to their fellow Americans is pretty appalling.  Many parallels are drawn between what happened then and what has been happening in the US over the last few years, the author alluding to this in her comments at the end. A very powerful and engrossing novel. 

EVERYTHING IS BEAUTIFUL by Eleanor Ray

 

A wonderful feel good story about a woman who has been let down by life, finally finds a way to cope, and suddenly finds herself challenged again by a little bit of serendipity. Amy Ashton is 39 years old, she lives in London, commutes daily to and from her admin job where she has been for the last 20 years or so. She lives alone, in the house she lived in all those years ago, before her boyfriend, the love of her life, and her best friend, just one day disappeared. No warning, no suspicious behaviour from either of them, no bodies ever found, no bank accounts ever touched. Poof. Just gone. The obvious conclusion is that they had run away together, and even the police investigation came to the same conclusion. 

For Amy, the betrayal of her lover and friend totally devastates her. She finds comfort and security in things, everyday objects that held meaning for her in happier times. Over the years she becomes a mega hoarder, her house quite uninhabitable, and Amy living a tiny life between her work place and the security of grossly overcrowded house. Then one day, a family with two small boys moves in next door. Children being children, they explore their neighbourhood, one property being Amy's. The resulting destruction of a collection of garden pots in the back yard begins the long, difficult and emotional climb for Amy out of her safe and secure existence. Can she find it in herself to start again, to slowly turn back the pages of the last years and find out what really happened to Tim and Chantelle, plus rediscover herself in all of this. Does she have the courage to do so? How many little steps forward and backward will it take for her to see that life really can get better?

So heart warming, and lovely to read in these times when we are being kinder to each other, reconnecting with neighbours, friends. Checking on each other. There is a little bit of Amy in all of us, which makes her so relatable, likeable, and so frustrating as she dilly dallys around, unsure about what to do as she is faced with different problems and decisions.  

THE PARIS LIBRARY by Janet Skeslien Charles

 

Novels set in WWII continue to fascinate, so much true factual material to create great plot lines and characters. And so much of the stories we are reading are about ordinary people who find themselves doing extra ordinary things. This novel is set, in a most unexpected place - a library. Who would ever think that the stereotype we have librarians being bookish old fuddie duddies could be so wonderfully challenged by the staff and volunteers at the American Library in Paris. This library has its own history, much of it touched upon in this story and there is plenty more on-line. During the war, after the Nazis took over Paris, it was under constant threat of closure, but the staff bravely continued to keep the doors open. 

Some of those staff and readers feature in this story, along with the fictional story of the lead character Odile Souchet. Odile is young, early 20s, passionate about books, reading, and desperate to work at the the library. She gets a job there before the war starts, overjoyed and rapt to be working in a place she has known most of her life. Once the Nazis turn up, of course, things aren't quite so rosy. Odile makes it through the war, but there are many losses of people, books, betrayals, tragedy. 

Parallel to this story, is that of Lily, a teenage girl growing up in a small town in the US during the early 1980s. Odile just happens to be living next door,  a reclusive old lady. Life is a bit tough for Lily with her mother seriously ill then dying. It isn't long before her father remarries, bringing that bucket of problems with it. Through a school assignment Lily befriends Odile, and finds for herself a refuge in Odile's company, wisdom and quiet house. But Odile refuses to divulge anything of her past, how she came to be in the US, what happened to her during the war. Lily begins to develop her own theories with some unhappy consequences.

The historical fiction part of the novel is very good, the author expanding greatly and using some fiction license to make a great story of the WWII story line. She gives a vivid picture  of life in Paris during this time, fear and hunger being the overriding problems that dominate daily life. The mysterious disappearance of anyone who gets in the way of the Nazi regime, the need to be constantly vigilant in one's own behaviour and speech is constantly there. Paris is made to look bleak, which makes the presence of the library, its sanctuary even more powerful and unifying  to the people who work there and use it. 

Where this falls down for me, is the post war 1980s story. I can only think that the author was trying to draw a parallel between the troubles of Odile during the war and the more present troubles of Lily. I know tragedy and life circumstances is all relative, but I did feel it was pushing the boat out comparing Lily losing her mother to illness with what Odile, her family and friends went through some 40 years previous. Lily still has her friends, her father, a house to live in, good food, school to go to every day. She is a typical modern day teenage girl - petulant, self absorbed, and often unlikeable. I do remember what it was like to be this age, and having had two daughters myself feel like I know what I am talking about and not making generalised statements. I am not sure why the author felt she needed to put the story of Lily in. Odile's story, that of the library and the other characters in Paris is a huge story in itself, and I feel could easily have been made bigger. Hence the 3 stars, otherwise is would have been more.

THE BEST OF A.A. GILL by A.A. Gill

 

How I mourn that this man is no longer living in this world. We are all the poorer for not having him casting his perceptive eye over the many issues he was drawn to. We miss his fearlessness in confronting topics many would rather not be faced with, his disregard for only writing nice things, not afraid to be negative, rude, completely politically incorrect and biting in some of his reviews of people, places, eating establishments. Audacious yet full of compassion and tenderness in much of his writing. Here is someone who can write about anything, any subject you could think of, and make it a perfect piece of prose with an angle, an opinion, an argument, an idea that you hadn't heard of. 

This book is a collection of his best writings, although I fully expect that to be subjective naturally, published in a number of publications, mainly The Sunday Times, but also Australian Gourmet Traveller, GQ, Vanity Fair, and Tatler. His subject matter ranges from his opinions about vegetarians, Starbucks, the restaurant Noma, Essex, Airports, Teletubbies, David Attenborough, Pornography, Ageing, and many others. The issue dearest to his heart is the refugee crisis - so perfect and heartfelt in its hopelessness, despair and personal stories.

What makes his writing more stunning is that he is dyslexic. There is an article about that too. All his work apparently is dictated by him and then transcribed. His brain is amazing, and maybe because it sees words and how to tell stories in a different way from us literate people, his approach to telling us what he thinks is more powerful than simply using words as we know them to tell the story. I don't know enough about how the dyslexic brain works, but I do know this is one extraordinary man. 

Wouldn't it be marvellous to hear his take on the year 2020? There would be a whole book of writings generated by this insane year we have just all gone through. Genius. 

BURNT SHADOWS by Kamila Shamsie

I read Home Fires a year or so ago, loved it, one of my favourite reads of that year - very powerful, beautiful, heart rending, a terrible commentary on the world we live in with divided religions, cultures, expectations. So I saw this one in an op shop and at such a ridiculously low price I just had to take it. Written some 8 years earlier than Home Fires, this novel has much the same themes - cultural and religious differences, terrible conflicts, the tragedies of what has happened to countries decimated by Britain and the US - Japan, India, Pakistan, Afghanistan. The usual casualties of Western domination in the twentieth century. 

This story follows two families - one German/English and the other Indian. They are brought together by a young Japanese woman, Hiroko. In 1945 Hiroko lives in Nagasaki. She is 22, and in love with a young German, Konrad, who is an English tutor. The bomb is dropped, Konrad is killed, Hiroko scarred for life, but survives. With nothing and no one left for her in Japan, two years later she has made her way to Delhi, where Konrad's sister Ilsa is married to her very English husband James Burton. Right on the cusp of Partition, Hiroko finds herself drawn to James' Muslim Indian assistant Sajjad Ashraf. Then a betrayal, more violence, more tragedy. The story then moves to Karachi, in the newly created Pakistan. Hiroko and Sajjad are married, and have a son, the apple of their eye, on whom all their hopes and aspirations rest. Into their lives comes the son of Ilsa and James, having spent a large part of his childhood in India, he is strongly drawn to the sub continent. And things just go from bad to worse. The story finishes in the US/Canada, with a further tragic betrayal, brought on by the extreme paranoia and nationalism after the Twin Tower bombings in 2001. 

Hiroko is the centre character of the story, it beginning and ending with her. She lives through so much horror, pain, tragedy and is a survivor, such a strong person, always hopeful. But things keep getting in the way. 

These are stories and plot lines that will never go out of fashion or relevance. As long as we have differences in skin colour, religion, the way cultures and peoples do things differently, then we will continue to have these  terrible stories being told. Just as relevant now as in 2009. 

LEAVE THE WORLD BEHIND by Rumaan Alam

 

Such a great premise, exciting plot potential - white aspirational middle class New York family rent a beautiful house in the Hamptons for their summer holiday. Idyllic location, perfect house, happy teenage children, happy Mum and Dad. Until a knock on the door quite late in the evening of their second night. An older black couple who claim to be the owners of the house, and have fled New York following a black out. Instant tension. Surely this is enough conflict with a myriad of possibilities in plot and character development. But no. Because...

The characters are the stereotypes we would expect - distrustful holiday guests; overly polite cultured black couple trying not to tread on toes; annoying whiny unpleasant teenage children. There are no surprises in how the characters behave through out the story. 

Secondly the story decides to add an element of horror with the black out in the city seeming to precipitate some universal world wide cataclysmic event. Of which we have no idea at all, and so no context to be able to make any sense of what is going on. Is it an invasion? Or a nuclear war? Or some sort of chemical/bio weapon drop? Even a natural disaster? Or a combination of any of the above. Whatever has happened seems to have strange effects on people - not everyone suffers - interestingly the owners of the house seem to be untouched - may be this is something happening only to non-black people! Strange things such as thousands of deer coming out of the forest, prompting the teenage daughter to somehow develop a weird drive to follow them. Or the professor dad who goes out for a drive to see if he can find out what is going on, and inexplicably becomes totally disoriented and lost. And what are the alarming sonic booms that shake everyone to their core?

The book ends very weirdly, it just stops, totally incomplete, almost as if the page limit or word limit has been reached, so sorry folks, catastrophic end of the world story over. Did the world end or not? What happened to the characters? Most unsatisfying. 

However the writing itself is pretty good, the build up of tension well done, keeping the reader's interest high. It is just a shame it never really went anywhere and the characters did not wow at all. 

A WHOLE LIFE by Robert Seethaler

 

A master class in concise, compact, beautiful, evocative writing. But oh so sad. It may be a whole life, but it sure isn't fortunate, pleasant, joyful, happy, contented life. I also find it sad that a whole life can be written about in 149 pages, of decent sized font and at least 1.5 spacing. Maybe that is the point - a sad, lonely and painful life briefly told. 

Translated from german, this small novel is set in the mountains of Austria. Bleak, rugged, beautiful, scenic, pure and perfect. Andreas Eggers comes to this place as a small child, orphaned so fostered to a farming couple. Life is brutal, violent for the small boy, no love, affection, tenderness. He works hard, has a perfect work ethic, so despite a lame leg, finds work in the construction of cable cars. His childhood in the mountains gives him great climbing skills so he ends up with much of the dangerous work. He saves enough money for a small patch of land on the mountain side, falls in love, marries. He is happy and well deserving of it. But not for long. War comes, he ends up in a POW camp. War ends, he returns to the mountains. He spends the rest of his life living in the mountains, taking tourists on hikes, slowly ageing, slowly deteriorating, slowly dying. 

The writing is extraordinarily sparse, beautiful, melancholic. I still found the story sad though - a life that this man really had little control over, little say in how it was going to turn out. Probably the life that thousands, millions have endured. Sad but true. 

WHEN THE APRICOTS BLOOM by Gina Wilkinson

It's always good to write about what you know. Exactly what this author has done - ex journalist/foreign correspondent who was based in Baghdad as a 'dependent spouse' when her husband was posted there during the time of Saddam Hussein's rule. She couldn't work but she could observe and that is what she did. She was also befriended by a local woman who had been instructed to spy on this Western woman. And what a story she has created with this background. A story of friendship, betrayal, ethical and moral dilemmas, being a woman in an oppressive society, religious dogma, the power of tyranny, and how absolute power corrupts absolutely. 

Baghdad is a very scary place during the time of Hussein. The writer recreates the city of her time there - the traffic, the bustling crazy labyrinth markets, the secret deals, the dust, the heat, everyone working their butts off to make a living, stay safe, eyes and ears everywhere, the feel of fear  - incredibly visual. Into this environment comes Ally, the young wife of a diplomat, Tom,  at the Australian Embassy. Prior to becoming the travelling spouse she used to be a journalist, although she didn't put this on her visa application so the Iraqis don't know her history. Otherwise she wouldn't be there - no foreign press, even ex journalists are permitted in Iraq. On the instructions of the local secret police, she is befriended by Tom's secretary Huda. Huda's unwilling task is to pass onto the secret police any information she can about anything from the West. 

Huda is of peasant origins, but managed to learn English which gives her some standing. Huda grew up in a village with her parents and two brothers. She was best friends - blood friends - with Rania, the daughter of the sheikh of the village. Rania has quite a different life from Huda - being educated in England, a father with influence, which stood her in good stead when the revolution took place. Things however didn't end so well for Huda's family, and the girls go their separate ways. Now, years later in Baghdad they are reconnected through Ally  - not happily, not trusting each other. Amidst the climate of fear and horror around them, they have to learn to trust again, as the lives of their children depend on them working together. 

This is a good story, friendship and the bonds of childhood at its heart. It is also a story of courage, women using their own intelligence and intuition to beat the evil around them, to get the better of the violence and danger of the men around them. The strength and characters of the women grew as the story went on, I liked them all, finding ways to deceive those around them and solve a big problem. And yet again, so grateful I live where I live.