Tag: book-review

Who’s Right?

There are many ways of understanding Andrew Boryga’s book, “Victim”. It is an eye-opening examination of minority life in America.

Books of Interest
 Website: chetyarbrough.blog

“Victim” 

By: Andrew Boryga

Narrated by: Anthony Rey Perez

Andrew Boryga (Author, Bronx resident, Cornell graduate, freelance writer for the NYT, The New Yorker, and The Atlantic.)

There are many ways of understanding Andrew Boryga’s book, “Victim”. It is an eye-opening examination of minority life in America. Being poor, whether a minority or a white American, is a struggle for identity. A white person in America has immense advantage, but Boryga’s story shows how much greater the challenge is for a person of color.

The main characters of Boryga’s story are Latinos named Javier Perez, Gio and Lena. Some may argue only Javier and Gio are the most relevant but Lena, Javier’s romantic partner, is at the heart of a question of who is right in lives of inequality.

There are many reasons to appreciate Boryga’s insightful story. It gives credit to committed teachers who struggle to raise the sights of students who are challenged by poverty and hardship. Javier is a character with ambition to be more than a street hustler trying to get by in a low-income neighborhood in the Bronx. It is with the help of a single mother and a dedicated teacher that Javier pursues a better life. His father was a drug dealer, murdered in Puerto Rico. Being raised in New York by his mother, Javier visits his father when he is murdered. That experience, the strict upbringing of his mother, and a teacher at his school offer lessons of life and opportunity to Javier. With the help of his teacher, Javier becomes a college-educated’ writer who struggles to become a literary and financial success.

It seems the window of opportunity for Javier depends on his intelligence, the help of his teacher, and retrospectively, his friend, Gio.

At first reading of “Victim”, Gio appears to offer an alternative life like that which Javier’s father followed. Obviously, what happened to Javier’s father influences Javier’s choices in life. Javier tries to influence Gio to abandon the drug-mule’ road he is following. Javier fails Gio, himself, Lena, and the Latino students he teaches in his neighborhood.

Javier meets Lena in college.

Lena is Latino but comes from a more financially secure family in the Bronx with a strict father and loving mother. In contrast, Javier is being raised by his widowed mother who is barely making enough money to keep a roof over their head and food on the table. Lena is a social activist for Latino rights. Javier and Lena become lovers but from quite different economic and family backgrounds. They move in together, but their place of cohabitation is the old neighborhood in which Javier is a teacher and struggling writer.

Lena pursues her activist career with little pay and a difficult adjustment in an unsafe neighborhood in the Bronx.

She grows to feel isolated and unfulfilled in her pursuit of equal rights, both as a Latino and woman. Javier understands the neighborhood in which they live but to Lena it is too dangerous, and her job does not offer enough personal satisfaction and income for her and Javier to improve their lives. Javier ignores her concern because he understands life in the neighborhood and feels comfortable in dealing with its risks.

Javier and Lena are at a crossroads in their lives. Javier decides their crossroad has a meaning that is worthy of a story that could be published in the paper for which he works part time while teaching at the local school.

His story disingenuously describes the conflict between Lena and himself. Javier believes and writes that he would be abandoning the fight for Latino rights by leaving his neighborhood for a safer community that Lena desires. Javier does not take into consideration their common goals or the difference between a woman and a man when living in a tough neighborhood. The story he writes about their relationship and its breakup makes him famous. He is offered a higher paying job as a full-time writer. He quits teaching but the break-up is irreversible. The reason for its irreversibility is substance of the story. His story distorts the truth of why Lena leaves Javier and the neighborhood.

While Javier strives for success as a writer, Gio is arrested for drug dealing and sentenced to prison. Javier loses touch with Gio because of their different life decisions.

Earlier, Javier tries to rescue his friend Gio from the gang life of the neighborhood. Ironically, Gio saves Javier from a false understanding of what happened in his life. The mistake Javier makes with Gio is similar to the mistake he makes with Lena. Gio’s and Lena’s lives are only their own. Javier fails to appreciate their personal experiences and how they made them who they became. Gio’s life is changed by his gang and later prison experience. Lena’s life is formed by the influence of her parents and life as a middleclass woman who wishes to help her race succeed in a prejudiced world. Javier sacrifices his relationship with both Gio and Lena by not understanding their personal identities and reasons for being who they become.

Javier makes the mistake of using Lena and Gio as subjects of his stories that do not represent who they are from their personal life experiences.

However, Javier’s stories are so well written that he becomes a coveted writer by his newspaper and a book agent who wishes to represent him. The problem is that his stories are made of facts that are not truthful representations of either Lena’s or Gio’s evolved lives.

Javier is publicly exposed for his distorted stores about what it is like, and what it means to be a Latino American in a white-biased culture.

Javier’s wish to become a renowned writer is halted by a you-tube interview by an investigative reporter. He is fired by the paper who employs him. Gio tells Javier to quit feeling sorry for himself and tells him to get on with his life. Gio has overcome the trials of his imprisonment and is on the way to becoming a positive contribution to society even though it continues to be biased against his success. Javier begins to understand the importance of factual accuracy and understanding of others when writing a story purported to be the truth. One wonders if that is why the author chooses to identify “Victim” as a novel and not a report of his or anyone else’s life.

The story of “Victim” is that inequality is a fact of life but not an insurmountable obstacle to peace and prosperity for determined individuals.

LIFE’S CONSEQUENCES

Good and bad luck accompanies every life but what happens in the end comes from what we have done in the past.

Books of Interest
 Website: chetyarbrough.blog

“The Twelve Lives of Samuel Hawley” (A Novel)

By: Hannah Tinti

Narrated by: Elizabeth Wiley

Hannah Tinti (American author, magazine editor, won the Alex Award for “The Good Thief”.)

Hannah Tinti writes a story about the life of a 21st century American outlaw, Samuel Hawley. He lives a peripatetic life as a robber, former convict, and part time collector for fellow criminals. When acting as a robber, he has few scruples about acting outside the boundaries of civil society. Hawley is a meticulous and practiced gun owner who wanders through America carrying the scars of bullets and a life of violence.

Hawley’s life is dramatically changed when he meets and marries the mother of a daughter yet to be conceived.

The woman he marries is alleged to have drowned in an accident but is believed by a grandmother to have been murdered by Hawley.

Hawley’s daughter, Loo, doubts the truth of her maternal grandmother’s claim but is faced with reports of her mother being an excellent swimmer, unlikely to be drowned as an accident.

Tinti leads the listener/reader to a conclusion about the drowning that on the one hand seems possible but on the other inconsistent with the complicated history of an American outlaw. Hawley’s moral center is at an extreme end of societal norms but within the boundary of truth and rightness. That truth and rightness suggests he could not have drowned his wife.

In some ways Tinti’s story is about broken American families with children that have either a missing mother or father.

The dynamics of childhood are broken when either a father or mother are missing. Each parent contributes something to a child that is different when either are absent. Single parents become both bread winner and nurturer of a child when there is an absent parent. Hawley is a criminal who loves his daughter, idolizes his lost wife, and carries on with a life into which he was born. The peripatetic life of Hawley continues after the death of his wife. Now he is faced with raising a daughter on his own. They travel across the country, never truly becoming a part of one place or another.

The daughter becomes like her father in knowledge and love of guns and their use in America.

She emulates her father’s character by choosing to be in control of what she sees as a transactional world. It is the world her father has experienced and passes on to his daughter. Tinti shows Hawley deeply loves his daughter, grieves and idolizes his lost wife, but only views life as a societal transaction.

There is meaning in Tinti’s story, but that meaning is made with too many bullets.

What we do in our lives have consequences. Good and bad luck accompanies every life but what happens in the end comes from what we have done in the past. Maybe life is just a transaction.

NOWHERE PLACE

Gareth Brown envisions the power of books and those who read or listen to them. Brown infers books are the source of the world’s joys and troubles.

Books of Interest
 Website: chetyarbrough.blog

“The Book of Doors” (A Novel)

By: Gareth Brown

Narrated by: Miranda Raison

Gareth Brown (Scottish author, his first published novel.)

Gareth Brown envisions the power of books and those who read or listen to them. Brown infers books are the source of the world’s joys and troubles. The heroine of his story is Cassie Andrews. She is introduced as an employee of a bookstore. The book begins with a conversation between her and a customer. The customer is old but treated with curtesy and interest by Cassie. They talk about books they have read and enjoyed. Their last conversation is about “The Count of Monte Christo” and their mutual appreciation of its story.

The old man slumps and dies in the bookstore after his conversation with Cassie. He leaves a book on a table near him. It is titled “The Book of Doors”. After the police arrive and the body is removed from the store, Cassie sees the book and picks it up.

“The Book of Doors” is a metaphor for the power of books to transport one’s mind to the past, present, and future–particularly when it is well written.

A note in the book is to Cassie telling her it is a gift to her. Gareth Brown’s imaginative story begins. Brown creates a story about a book that gives the power of time travel to the one who possesses it. Nearly as significant, Brown reports there are a series of books like “The Book of Doors” that have the power to control all the good and bad things that happen in the world.

As with all popular books classified as fantasy, Brown tells a story that has basis in truth. Reading books influences human thought and action in the world.

Brown takes a giant step beyond influence by suggesting books control human thought and action. He tells a story of a secret library with a series of books with titles like “The Book of Pain”, “The Book of Joy”, “The Book of Matter” and others that are the source of human experience. The owner of that library in Brown’s story is Drummond Fox, a Scottish aristocrat and librarian.

Cassie chooses to briefly escape the world because of what she thinks is the loss of her close friend. She travels to a “nowhere” place to think and do nothing.

The cleverly written adventures of Cassie in Brown’s story are the attraction of the book. However, there are unresolved puzzles in “The Book of Doors”, even though the adventures are thrilling. Cassie believes earlier travel to the “nowhere place” was the original source of the book’s creation. She thinks she may have been the source of their writing. As she decides to return to the world, she reasons she may have created the books in this “nowhere” reality.

Questions never answered are whether the books should be destroyed, how or why Cassie may have been the books’ creator, and whether Cassie is immortal or destined to die.

SOCIAL DYSFUNCTION

Rooney’s story is not a comforting tale but a reflection of social dysfunction that threatens humanity.

Books of Interest
 Website: chetyarbrough.blog

“Normal People” (A Novel)

By: Sally Rooney

Narrated by: Aoife McMahon

Sally Rooney (Irish author and screenwriter.)

Sally Rooney infers high school is a testing ground for one’s conduct and place in society. High school is a highly formative period because of its social influences. It is a testing ground for leaders and followers. However, students do not arrive as blank slates. Every person has a genetic inheritance and family relationships, some come from wealth, some from poverty, some from close families, others from broken homes with emotionally close or distant parents. Rooney reveals how high school students bring learned experiences that test one’s social and intellectual abilities. Rooney’s main characters, Marianne and Connell come from different socioeconomic backgrounds who become intimately close but socially isolated.

Mariane comes from a wealthy Irish family, Connell from a poor Irish single parent family. Both are gifted with high intelligence and low self-esteem. Mariane’s self-esteem is largely caused by her mother’s and sibling’s ridicule. Connell’s low self-esteem seems to come from poverty while being raised by a single supportive mother. Mariane and Connell become lovers in high school. It is Mariane’s first sexual experience and Connell’s first meaningful relationship.

That tragic event of a young friend’s suicide makes Mariane and Connell re-evaluate their lives. Despair over their non-committal lives reaches a crisis reflected in the statistics noted above.

Rooney explores Mariane’s and Connell’s on and off again romance through their college years and later adult lives. Their relationship remains close, but both choose other lovers in their post HS’ years. Mariane’s hook-ups are with self-absorbed, abusive men, while Connell’s appear casual, not deep or lasting. Near the end of the story Mariane and Connell are brought together by the tragic loss of a friend who commits suicide. A listener realizes they are both on a path that could either be self-destructive or redemptive.

In the last chapters, Rooney leaves listeners wondering whether Mariane and Connell will have a life together or revert to their former desperate lives.

Their relationship mends and the potential for self-destruction seems ameliorated but separation looms over their lives. Apart, they may revert to the damaged personalities of their earlier lives. Rooney’s story is not a comforting tale but a reflection of social dysfunction that threatens humanity.

NATURE’S BALANCE

Do humans upset nature or are they another victim of nature’s balance?

Blog: awalkingdelight

Books of Interest
 Website: chetyarbrough.blog

“Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead”

By: Olga Tokarczuk, Antonia Lloyd-Jones

Narrated by: Beata Pozniak

“Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead” is well narrated, but its appeal seems lost in translation. The book is written with financial support from the Czech Republic. It makes a fundamental point about the animal world, but its story is diminished by its main character’s representation.

WINTER IN THE CZECH REPUBLIC

The heroine of the story believes in astrology. Those who are non-believers are distracted by the heroine’s constant reference to what many, if not most, consider a pseudo-science. Janina is an older woman who lives in a small settlement in the Czech Republic. She is a schoolteacher who has responsibility for the caring of second homes in a wilderness settlement when not in use by their owners. There are only a handful of residents that stay in the settlement during harsh winters.

The story begins with the death of a year-round resident. It appears the death is an accident from choking on a deer bone, but several mysterious deaths occur in that winter that make the local police realize a murderer is in the area.

The schoolteacher argues the deaths are a result of a rebellion against hunters by deer and wolves that have been indiscriminately hunted and killed for sport. She supports her argument with evidence of deer and wolf tracks near the death scenes. She reinforces her unwavering belief with astrological observations of the planets, human’ dates of birth, and the solar system’s orbital interference with each other.

The schoolteacher argues to all who would listen that indiscriminate human predation is causing an animal rebellion in their remote location.

She has mysteriously lost two pet dogs in this winter of death. The truth of her theory of rebellion becomes less believable and more mundane with the discovery of more human deaths and her characterization of her pets as lost daughters. Her dogs may have just run away or been eaten by wolves. With more human deaths, the police are convinced there is a human murderer in their midst. The story becomes a murder mystery, not a conspiracy foretold by the heavens.

What actually happened to her dogs is the clue that solves the case.

One surmises the underlying meaning of the story is that human beings are indiscriminate murderers of nature.

How many buffalo, elephants, lions, wildebeests, rhinos, tigers, boar, elk, and deer have been hunted and killed by humans for their ivory or trophies with carcasses left to rot?

In one sense, all predation is simply a way of keeping nature in balance. In another, human predation upsets the balance of nature by volitional choice. To the author, it is the second sense that tells listeners–humans do not preserve but arbitrarily upset the balance of nature.

The murder mystery is solved in the end, but the question lingers. Do humans upset nature or are they just another victim of nature’s balance? Time, not religion, science, or fiction, will tell.