Tag: book-review

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.