Monthly Archives: September 2017

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The National Book Award Longlists!

On Friday, the National Book Foundation, in partnership with The New Yorker, announced the Longlist for Fiction for the 2017 National Book Awards, rounding out the Longlists for the four categories celebrated by the Award, among the highest literary awards given in the United States.

The mission of the National Book Foundation and the National Book Awards is to celebrate the best of American literature, to expand its audience, and to enhance the cultural value of great writing in America.  Though it’s had it’s ups and downs, trying to find cultural relevancy and “fit in” to American culture, the National Book Award today has emerged as an important way to recognize some of the great work going on in American literature–and a great way for us readers to discover new books!  So here are the longlists for each of the four categories that the National Book Award celebrates.  Come into the Library soon to learn about each of these titles!

The short list will come out on Oct. 4, and the winners will be announced in a ceremony on Nov. 15.  And we’ll be here for both announcements!

Fiction
Elliot Ackerman, Dark at the Crossing
Daniel Alarcón, The King Is Always Above the People: Stories
Charmaine Craig, Miss Burma
Jennifer Egan, Manhattan Beach
Lisa Ko, The Leavers
Min Jin Lee, Pachinko
Carmen Maria Machado, Her Body and Other Parties: Stories
Margaret Wilkerson Sexton, A Kind of Freedom
Jesmyn Ward, Sing, Unburied, Sing
Carol Zoref, Barren Island (Check with your friendly Reference Librarians to order this book via ComCat!)

Nonfiction
Erica Armstrong Dunbar, Never Caught: The Washingtons’ Relentless Pursuit of Their Runaway Slave, Ona Judge
Frances FitzGerald, The Evangelicals: The Struggle to Shape America
James Forman Jr., Locking Up Our Own: Crime and Punishment in Black America
Masha Gessen, The Future Is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia (Will be released on Oct. 7, 2017)
David Grann, Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI
Naomi Klein, No Is Not Enough: Resisting Trump’s Shock Politics and Winning the World We Need
Nancy MacLean, Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right’s Stealth Plan for America
Richard Rothstein, The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America
Kevin Young, Bunk: The Rise of Hoaxes, Humbug, Plagiarists, Phonies, Post-Facts, and Fake News

Poetry
Frank Bidart, Half-light: Collected Poems 1965-2016
Chen Chen, When I Grow Up I Want to Be a List of Further Possibilities (Check with your friendly Reference Librarians to order this book via ComCat!)
Leslie Harrison, The Book of Endings (Check with your friendly Reference Librarians to order this book via WorldCat!)
Marie Howe, Magdalene: Poems (Check with your friendly Reference Librarians to order this book via ComCat!)
Laura Kasischke, Where Now: New and Selected Poems (Check with your friendly Reference Librarians to order this book via ComCat!)
Layli Long Soldier, WHEREAS
Shane McCrae, In the Language of My Captor (Check with your friendly Reference Librarians to order this book via ComCat!)
Sherod Santos, Square Inch Hours (Check with your friendly Reference Librarians to order this book via WorldCat!)
Danez Smith, Don’t Call Us Dead: Poems (Check with your friendly Reference Librarians to order this book via ComCat!)
Mai Der Vang, Afterland

Young People’s Literature
Elana K. Arnold, What Girls Are Made Of (Check with your friendly Reference Librarians to order this book via ComCat!)
Robin Benway, Far from the Tree
Samantha Mabry, All the Wind in the World
Mitali Perkins, You Bring the Distant Near
Jason Reynolds, Long Way Down
Erika L. Sánchez, I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter (Check with your friendly Reference Librarians to order this book via ComCat!)
Laurel Snyder, Orphan Island
Angie Thomas, The Hate U Give
Rita Williams-Garcia, Clayton Byrd Goes Underground
Ibi Zoboi, American Street

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Five Book Friday!

And a very happy Free For All birthday to Jamaican-American poet and author Claude McKay!

McKay was born in Jamaica in 1889, and educated by his older brother, who had a considerable collection of English literature and scientific texts.  In 1912, McKay published a book of verse called Songs of Jamaica, recording his impressions of black life in Jamaica in dialect. That same year, he traveled to the United States to attend Tuskegee Institute in Alabama. He remained there only a few months, leaving to study agriculture at Kansas State University.

During the 1920’s, McKay became a devoted Communist, and was invited to Russia by Lenin to aid in the rebuilding of the country after the Revolution.  From Russia, McKay went to France, returning to the US, and Harlem, in 1934. Losing faith in Communism, he turned his attention to the teachings of various spiritual and political leaders in Harlem, eventually converting to Catholicism.  McKay’s viewpoints and poetic achievements in the earlier part of the twentieth century set the tone for the Harlem Renaissance and gained the deep respect of younger black poets of the time, including Langston Hughes. His remarkable range of work run the gamut from sonnets to modernist novels, making McKay a true original in the history of American and African American literature.  Today, we share one of his poems with you in honor of his special day.

The White House

Your door is shut against my tightened face,
And I am sharp as steel with discontent;
But I possess the courage and the grace
To bear my anger proudly and unbent.
The pavement slabs burn loose beneath my feet,
And passion rends my vitals as I pass,
A chafing savage, down the decent street;
Where boldly shines your shuttered door of glass.
Oh, I must search for wisdom every hour,
Deep in my wrathful bosom sore and raw,
And find in it the superhuman power
To hold me to the letter of your law!
Oh, I must keep my heart inviolate
Against the potent poison of your hate.

And now, on to the books!

Sing, Unburied, Sing: National Book Award winner Jesmyn Ward, has returned to grace us with a book that echoes Toni Morrison, William Faulkner and Homer in this tribute to Southern literature.  Jojo and his toddler sister, Kayla, live with their grandparents, Mam and Pop, and the occasional presence of their drug-addicted mother, Leonie, on a farm on the Gulf Coast of Mississippi. Leonie is simultaneously tormented and comforted by visions of her dead brother, which only come to her when she’s high; Mam is dying of cancer; and quiet, steady Pop tries to run the household and teach Jojo how to be a man. When the white father of Leonie’s children is released from prison, she packs her kids and a friend into her car and sets out across the state for Parchman farm, the Mississippi State Penitentiary, on a journey rife with danger and promise.  This is a timeless story, and yet one that is startlingly immediate, dealing with identity, race, loss, and the opioid epidemic, in remarkable ways.  Buzzfeed wrote a glorious review of this book, which reads, in part, “The heart of Jesmyn Ward’s Sing, Unburied, Sing is story — the yearning for a narrative to help us understand ourselves, the pain of the gaps we’ll never fill, the truths that are failed by words and must be translated through ritual and song …. Ward’s writing throbs with life, grief, and love, and this book is the kind that makes you ache to return to it.”

 

The Cooking Gene : a journey through African-American culinary history in the Old South: Michael W. Twitty is a highly respected culinary historian, and in this wonderful book, he tackles the incredible divisive issue of race in a new, intriguing, and beautifully insightful way–through food!  Southern food is integral to the American culinary tradition, yet the question of who “owns” it is one of the most provocative touch points in our ongoing struggles over race.  Twitty takes readers to the white-hot center of this fight, tracing the roots of his own family and the charged politics surrounding the origins of soul food, barbecue, and all Southern cuisine.  From the tobacco and rice farms of colonial times to plantation kitchens and backbreaking cotton fields, Twitty not only tells his family’s story, but suggests that there is a hope for healing in Southern food, and embracing the discomforts of the past.  Positive reviews have been pouring in for this book, including a starred review from Kirkus, who said “Twitty ably joins past and present, puzzling out culinary mysteries along the way… An exemplary, inviting exploration and an inspiration for cooks and genealogists alike.”

Are You Sleeping?: Were you a loyal listener of Serial?  Did you adore the twists and turns that podcast presented?  If so, then Kathleen Barber’s new psychological thriller is for you.  Josie Buhrman has spent the last ten years trying to escape her family’s reputation. After her father’s murder thirteen years prior, her mother ran away to join a cult and her twin sister Lanie, once Josie’s best friend, betrayed her. Now, Josie has finally put down roots in New York, and is desperate to make a life with her partner Caleb.  But when investigative reporter Poppy Parnell sets off a media firestorm with a mega-hit podcast that reopens the long-closed case of Josie’s father’s murder, Josie’s world begins to unravel. Meanwhile, the unexpected death of Josie’s long-absent mother forces her to return to her Midwestern hometown where she must confront the demons from her past—and the lies on which she has staked her future.  This is a novel that will keep you guessing, re-thinking, and doubting everything you think you knew about each of these characters and their motivations.  Publisher’s Weekly loved this book, giving it a starred review and calling it an “inventive debut…The intense plot and character studies are enhanced by the emotional look at the dynamics of a family forever scarred by violence.”

A Legacy of Spies: There are plenty of us who are mourning the Cold War, if only for the dearth of high-tension, intellectual spy novels.  But weep no more, dear readers, for John Le Carré has returned to his immortal Smiley, bringing us his first novel from the Circus in a quarter century.  Peter Guillam, staunch colleague and disciple of George Smiley of the British Secret Service, otherwise known as the Circus, is living out his old age on the family farmstead on the south coast of Brittany when a letter from his old Service summons him to London. The reason? His Cold War past has come back to claim him. Intelligence operations that were once the toast of secret London, including George Smiley and Peter Guillam himself, are to be scrutinized by a generation with no memory of the Cold War and no patience with its justifications.  By interweaving past and present, Le Carré reminds fans just why they fell in love with his work–and presents a whole new generation of readers with the deliciously gray world of espionage.  This book is making headlines all over the place, and The Atlantic raved “Le Carré is such a gifted storyteller that he interlaces the cards in his deck so they fit not simply with this book, but with the earlier ones as well.”

The Clockwork Dynasty:  Another thriller that blends the past and present, but Daniel H. Wilson’s tale is one where automatons are hidden amongst humanity, biding their time…In the present, June Stefanov, a young anthropologist specializing in ancient technology, uncovers a terrible secret concealed in the workings of a three-hundred-year-old mechanical doll.  With her career and her life at stake, June will ally with a remarkable traveler on an around-the-world adventure and discover breathtaking secrets of the past.  Meanwhile, in 1725, in the depths of the Kremlin, the tsar’s loyal mechanician brings to life two astonishingly mechanical beings;  a brother and sister fallen out of time, possessed with uncanny power. Struggling to blend into pre-Victorian society, they are pulled into a legendary war that has raged for centuries.  This is a story that will have fans of steampunk and gothic, as well as techno-fans, and readers in need of a great female lead, singing with delight.  Kirkus loved this book too, noting “It may wear its influences on its sleeve but it’s also a welcome treat for steampunk and fantasy fans. A thrilling mix of influences, much like Sylvain Neuvel’s Sleeping Giants and HBO’s Westworld, that creates a captivating scenario begging for many sequels.”

 

Until next week, beloved patrons….happy reading!

 

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Reading though our Fears: North Korea

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To say that we’ve been hearing a lot about North Korea lately would be the grossest of understatements.  Every day, it seems, our existence is further imperiled by North Korea.

From youtube.com

But the more these stories come out, the more North Korea sounds like a boogeyman, or a classic movie monster, lumbering around and menacing all and sundry.  The more we hear about North Korea, or see its leading examining a bomb, or see a parade of missiles, the easier and easier it is to forget that North Korea isn’t a cinematic villain, but a place.  A place where people live.  People who are made of the same basic matter that we are.  People who love their families, who enjoy sunny days, who get hungry, and people who worry about what tomorrow might bring.

The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, which is the official title of the country is question, is an extraordinarily secretive and secluded country into which very few people manage to enter or exit safely.  As a result, it’s difficult for us, outside of the Korean peninsula, to understand what life is really like there.  It’s difficult, at times, to remember that this is a nation of human beings like us.

And that is why reading is so critically important–today, perhaps more than ever.  Books help us learn the truth behind the screaming headlines, or the reality behind the rhetoric.  But more importantly, reading–and reading fiction, especially–helps us be more empathetic people.  It’s harder to see someone as inhuman, or subhuman, or unhuman, when you have had a chance to see the world through their eyes.

Needless to say, there isn’t a great deal of first-hand information coming out of North Korea, in either fiction or non-fiction.  But that makes the sources and stories that we do have that much more important, and that much more vital to helping us understand what life is like on this other side of this violent divide.  So here are a few titles that are available at the library now that can shed some light on life in North Korea, and, hopefully, provide you with some insight into life there:

The Accusation: This book is one of the most dangerous out there right now.  Written in secret between 1989 and 1995 and smuggled out of the country in 2013, these short works offer powerful insights into a world within the high and restrictive borders of North Korea.  The Guardian published a fascinating piece on the origin of the stories and their author, who was–or perhaps is–employed by the nation’s official writer’s association.  It took years, and a coalition of brave people, to get these stories out of North Korea, but the results absolutely justify that work.  In each of these seven tales, industrious North Koreans, “innocent people whose lives consisted of doing as they were told”, accidentally into the clutches of the state’s real, and deadly power. Some are jailed, some escape, die, or go mad, but the real culmination of each story occurs in that instant of revelation, when they understand that, despite everything they have always been told, the state is malign.  The Chinese human rights worker, Do Hee-yun, who spearheaded the efforts to rescue this manuscript, has said she hasn’t heard from the person known as Bandi for months.  What the ramifications of sending his manuscript into the world instead of trying to leave, we cannot know.  But it makes these stories that must more precious, and that much more necessary.

Without You There Is No Us: My Time With the Sons of North Korea’s Elite: Suki Kim is a Korean-American teacher who worked as a visiting English instructor at the all-male Pyongyang University of Science and Technology in 2011.  This memoir describes not only her experiences with her students, whose education in technology is severely hampered by the limitations the government imposes on the internet and computer programming.  It also talks about her experiences adjusting–or not adjusting–to life under a military dictatorship.  The patriotic songs, the parades, the constant enforcement of party loyalty–all of it is chilling to read.  But there are glimpses of hope in these pages, even in an act we might take for granted, like logging onto the Internet; watching a Harry Potter film; the thought-provoking questions from her students.  And these human interactions are what make this memoir such a memorable and such a human one.

Under the Same Sky: from starvation in North Korea to salvation in America: As a child, Joseph Kim survived North Korea’s Great Famine (which lasted, approximately from 1994 to 1998), which sent most of his family searching for food and aid along the Chinese border.  Joseph was left alone to starve, until he made the decision to cross the border, as well.  He was fortunate enough to be taken in, given shelter, and eventually, through the help of a number of humanitarians, he was brought to the US, without knowing a word of English, or having any connections on which he could rely.  This book is Joseph’s harrowing experiences of growing up during some of the darkest days in North Korea’s modern history (a period about which we still know tragically little), and his very challenging immigrant experience.  But is also a story of hope, survival, faith and endurance, told with insight, brutal honesty, and impressive narrative form.  Publisher’s Weekly’s glowing review noted, “Told with poise and dignity, Kim’s story…provides vivid documentation of a remarkable life. It also offers an important account of atrocities committed within North Korea that have been hidden from the West—and indeed, most of the rest of the world. A courageous and inspiring memoir.”

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The 2017 Man Booker Prize Shortlist!

In the wee hours of the morning, we learned the titles that made the shortlist for the 2017 Man Booker Prize, one of our favorite fiction awards here at the Library.

As a lot of news outlets have noted, there are a number of surprises in this list.  The first is that many of the really big names who were a part of the longlist, including Sebastian Barry, Arundhati Roy, and Zadie Smith, did not make the shortlist.  The second is that two debut authors, Emily Fridlund and Fiona Mozley, who are also the youngest nominees.  For many, the final surprise is that half the list are American authors.

The bidding has begun, with bookmakers giving George Saunders’  Lincoln at the Bardo the best odds to win, and there is no doubt that speculation, debates, and a lot of reading, will be going on between now and when the final announcement is made on October 17th.  But, as noted on the Man Booker website:

If there is anyone who will find the next month more relaxing than previous ones, it is the judges themselves. Not that their work is done but rather that they can take a bit more time over things. They have read each of the shortlisted books a minimum of twice already and now they will have to read them for a third time and ask themselves not which book is a contender to win but which book deserves to win. For all concerned the next four weeks will seem simultaneously a very long and a very short time. Hopefully, for a few days at least, they can all take a couple of moments to reflect – and maybe even congratulate themselves – on what they have achieved so far.

So here, without further ado, is the shortlist for the 2017 Man Booker Prize.  Come in and check out these titles, and make your own educated guesses about who will win, today!

The 2017 shortlist:

4 3 2 1 by Paul Auster (US)
History of Wolves by Emily Fridlund (US)
Exit West by Mohsin Hamid (Pakistan-UK)
Elmet by Fiona Mozley (UK) (Not yet released in the US)
Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders (US)
Autumn by Ali Smith (UK)

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Hurricane Irma Relief

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Two weeks ago, we offered a number of ways that you could help the victims of Hurricane Harvey in Texas–and you, the people of Massachusetts, and our own beloved patrons, responded.

As the Boston Globe reported, Boston City Hall was buzzing with people walking in off the streets with donations that ranged from 200 t-shirts, to boxes of diapers and formula, to change from piggy banks.  Here in Peabody, the donation portal for Hurricane Harvey relief is still active via the City Hall Website (the first option on this page will take you to the donation portal).

Now, there is more need from our friends in Florida and the US Virgin Islands.  These are early days as yet, and the total damage from Hurricane Irma, which is still winding its way up the eastern seaboard, has yet to be fully assessed.  Nevertheless, there are people and organizations already doing good in the communities hardest hit by this storm, and they need your assistance.

Here are a list of charities, programs, and organizations that are active in the Florida and US Virgin Islands communities that are currently accepting donations.  If you are in a position to help financially, you can click on any of the links to see the charities.  Please avoid sending clothes, toys, or perishable items at this time, as there are few places to receive or store it.  The New York Times has produced a helpful article on how to help, and how to avoid scams.

If this is not a time you are able to help, please don’t worry.  Rebuilding in a process that takes years and years, and there will be any number of ways to help in the future.  We will be sure to keep you updated about them as news and opportunities become available.

Thank you in advance for your generosity, your kindness, and any good wishes or kind thoughts you are able to share.

We are all made of stars.  It’s time to shine.

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Breaking News…some 400 years in the making…

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Oh, these are amazing times in which we live, beloved patrons!

First off, last year, we had the discovery of the HMS Terror, one of the ships in the doomed Franklin Expedition.  Sire John Franklin and his crew had been determined to discover the Northwest Passage (the sea route from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific), but the ship foundered in heavy weather and was abandoned, along with the HMS Erebus.  All 129 men on the Franklin expedition died, but, though 11 search parties were sent to find any trace of the party or their ships, nothing was heard of the Franklin Expedition…except for a number of stories from local Inuit and Inuk tribes, which went largely overlooked for years and years.   But last year, after finally paying appropriate attention to the Inuit tales, both ships were discovered, giving us a wealth of new insight into the last days of the expedition (and proving, once again, that we should listen to others).

And just this past week, we learn that the Voynich Manuscript–a book that has literally defied all attempts at decoding or translation for the past 400 years may very well have been decoded.  

The Voynich Manuscript has been carbon-dated to the early 15th century, but was named after Wilfrid Voynich, a Polish book dealer who purchased it in 1912.  There are a number of pages visibly missing from the book, but the 240 pages that remain are covered in a previously unidentified script that runs left to right across the page.  There are some words and phrases scattered throughout the book in Latin, but, because hand-written manuscripts are notoriously challenging to read, even figuring out some of these words have proven difficult.  There are also a bunch of hand-drawn illustrations that seem as random and confusing as the text, though that is largely, I think, because they appear out of context).  Code-breakers who worked during the First and Second World Wars tried parsing the manuscript without success.  Expert cryptanalysts since have tried to read the manuscript–without success.  In 1962, cryptanalyst Elizebeth Friedman described any attempts to read the book as “doomed to utter frustration”.  There have been a number of guesses made about what the book was supposed to convey, with most people pretty convinced that it was meant to be pharmacopoeia (a book with recipes for medicines) or a medical guide of some sort.  But no one was sure.  Until, perhaps, now.

According to history researcher and television writer Nicholas Gibbs, who declared in The Times Literary Supplement last week that he had solved the riddles of the Voynich Manuscript, the book is a treatise on women’s health.  Using both textual analysis and a study of the illustrations (specifically, the well-known image of a group of women bathing), Gibbs eventually realized what he was looking at.  To quote from the TLS piece:

All the detail and objects depicted in such manuscripts are salient points picked out from a story. Abstract and perhaps unrecognized at first, they can suddenly surprise as a narrative comes into focus. Artists who illustrate instruction manuals – for that is what the Voynich manuscript is – are naturally economical and only provide detail where necessary. In the Voynich manuscript, the same object – an oversized doughnut with a hole and a carbuncle attached to its side – is proffered by several of the unclothed women. Its significance only became apparent when, as I was casually leafing through a medical-related book…I came across the doughnut object depicted as a lodestone (natural magnet).  […]

By now, it was more or less clear what the Voynich manuscript is: a reference book of selected remedies lifted from the standard treatises of the medieval period, an instruction manual for the health and wellbeing of the more well to do women in society, which was quite possibly tailored to a single individual. The script had hitherto proved resistant to interpretation and presented several hurdles….I recognized at least two of the characters in the Voynich manuscript text as Latin ligatures, Eius and Etiam. Ligatures were developed as scriptorial short-cuts. They are composed of selected letters of a word, which together represent the whole word, not unlike like a monogram. An ampersand is just such an example….It became obvious that each character in the Voynich manuscript represented an abbreviated word and not a letter.

The bathing ladies from the Voynich Manuscript

Seriously, all, this is a really remarkable article, and, if it is true (and I have no reason to doubt at this point in time that it is not true), an incredible, momentous moment in the history of books, of codes, and of human enterprise.

If you’re interesting in learning more about the Voynich Manuscript, or the Franklin Expedition, or some other unsolved (for now!) mysteries, have a look at these titles:

The Friar and the Cipher: Lawrence and Nancy Goldstone are well-known book collectors, and have written several books together about the history of the book–and the history of the Voynich Manuscript, in particular.  This book claims that that Roger Bacon, a thirteenth-century astronomer, wrote the Manuscript, and while that part may now be up for debate, their history of the text, and of its life after being purchased by Voynich is a fascinating, well-researched, and surprisingly exciting account that will really drive home how remarkable the Voynich Manuscript truly is, to literary types, as well as code-breakers and historians.

Ice Ghosts : The Epic Hunt for the Lost Franklin Expedition: journalist Paul Watson, was on the icebreaker that led the expedition that discovered the HMS Erebus in 2014, and he broke the news of the discovery of the HMS Terror in 2016.  This book is not only a gripping travel narrative of the hunt to find the HMS Terror, but it’s also a great history of the Franklin Expedition, as well as the Inuit stories that helped locate the ships.  This blend of technological innovation and oral history make this a book for history buffs, techno-wizards, and treasure-seekers alike, and is an excellent choice for any armchair explorers looking for a new polar expedition.

Lost City of Z: Even if you saw the motion picture based on this story, you should read the book by David Grann, which not only tells the story of Sir Percy Fawcett’s fascination with the Amazon and its secrets, but also of Grann’s own adventures into “the green Hell”.   In 1925, the legendary British explorer Percy Fawcett ventured into the Amazon jungle, in search of a fabled civilization, never to return.  Though Grann claims to have ‘solved’ the story of Fawcett’s final expedition, the real power of this book lies in the enduring mystery of the Fawcett’s legacy.

Codebreaker : the history of codes and ciphers, from the ancient pharaohs to quantum cryptography: Stephen Pincock’s book is not only a history of how humans have made and broken codes, but also focuses on those that haven’t yet been broken…including the Voynich Manuscript.  From the Beale Code to the mysteries of Easter Island, this book is ponderous at times in the amount of information it contains, but is all the more fun, ultimately, because of it, as it helps not only in cracking codes, but in helping readers appreciate the effort and intellect that goes into creating and cracking them!

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Five Book Friday!

And a very happy Free For All birthday wish to one of my favorite poets, Siegfried Sassoon.

Sassoon was born in 1886 to a wealthy Jewish family who had made their fortune as traders within the British Empire.  He enlisted in the British Army in advance of European War, and was serving with the Sussex Yeomanry when Great Britain declared war against Germany on August 4, 1914.  For three years, Sassoon threw himself into soldiering.  He earned the nickname “Mad Jack” for his willingness to accept and carry out acts that seemed near-suicidal.  Not only did Sassoon enjoy the excitement, but it also prevented any of the men under his command, or around him, from taking on such a task themselves.  According to his friend Robert Graves, “He went over with bombs in daylight, under covering fire from a couple of rifles, and scared away the occupant…instead of signalling for reinforcements, he sat down in the German trench and began reading a book of poems which he had brought with him.”  On July 27, 1916, he was awarded the Military Cross “For conspicuous gallantry during a raid on the enemy’s trenches. He remained for 1½ hours under rifle and bomb fire collecting and bringing in our wounded”.

But Sassoon’s unswerving loyalty to the men with whom he served almost brought him into an infamous confrontation with military authorities.  Following the death of a dear friend in battle, Sassoon published a letter (an image of which appears at left) he had already sent to his commanding officer entitled Finished with the War: A Soldier’s Declaration, which read, in part “I believe that the war is being deliberately prolonged by those who have the power to end it”, stating that he refused to fight.  Thanks to the intervention of several friends (including Graves) and the unwillingness of the war office to condemn a decorated soldiers as a traitor, Sassoon was declared to be suffering shell-shock, and was sent to Criaglockhart, a mental hospital for officers run by Dr. William Rivers.  In the interest of brevity, let us say that the friendship that emerged from Rivers’ treatment of Sassoon changed both their lives.  While at Craiglockhart, Sassoon also met and worked with Wilfred Owen, who is perhaps the most celebrated of the so-called “War Poets”.

Sassoon survived the war, and his poems and memoirs of his service remain among the most well-known and cited to come out of the postwar period.  He was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire in the 1951  continued writing until his death from stomach cancer one week before his 81st birthday.

Sassoon’s poems appear consistently in anthologies of First World War literature–you can hear a recording of him reading one here.  But those poems represent only a very small percentage of his incredible output, so today, I wanted to share with you one of his lesser-known war poems, written in 1919 while he was waiting to embark for Egypt:

Memory

When I was young my heart and head were light,
And I was gay and feckless as a colt
Out in the fields, with morning in the may,
Wind on the grass, wings in the orchard bloom.
O thrilling sweet, my joy, when life was free
And all the paths led on from hawthorn-time
Across the carolling meadows into June.

But now my heart is heavy-laden. I sit
Burning my dreams away beside the fire:
For death has made me wise and bitter and strong;
And I am rich in all that I have lost.
O starshine on the fields of long-ago,
Bring me the darkness and the nightingale;
Dim wealds of vanished summer, peace of home,
And silence; and the faces of my friends.

And now…on to the books!

Letters to his Neighbor: Marcel Proust wrote some of the most profound philosophical works of the 20th century.  He also wrote a number of letters to his noisy neighbor, Dr. Williams, who plagued his existence with his noise, which Proust could hear in detail thanks to the cork walls that divided their rooms.   Things only got worse when Williams married and had children.  Recently discovered among Proust’s correspondence, these ever-polite letters, written mainly to Mrs. Williams, which were often accompanied by flowers, compliments, books, even pheasants are frequently hilarious, especially when Proust couches his fury in a gracious tone.  But they are also genuinely engaging–for Proust found an odd affinity with Mrs. Williams, and while we are lacking her responses, making this correspondence incomplete, there is still an enormous amount to enjoy here.  Additionally, Lydia Davis’ translation is delightful, making Proust’s life accessible to those of us who are not devotees, and penning a wonderful afterward that helps put these letters into context of his life and his writings.  The Village Voice loved this little volume, noting that it is “brilliantly translated by Lydia Davis, is inadvertently hilarious in hyper-genteel poise; we see Proust at his most desperate, charming to the extreme, an effect no doubt amplified by Davis’s elegant prose.”

The Ways of Wolfe: James Carlos Blake’s Wolfe series brings readers right into the dusty, dangerous, morally dubious, and ruthlessly compelling world of the Wolfe clan, whose roots run deep on both sides of the United States-Mexico border, and whose prevailing interests straddle both sides of the law.  Twenty years ago, college student Axel Prince Wolfe―heir apparent to his Texas family’s esteemed law firm and its “shade trade” criminal enterprises―teamed up with his best friend, Billy, and a Mexican stranger in a high-end robbery that went wrong, and where Axel was left along to shoulder the blame and the fall-out among his family.  Now, Axel has exhausted thoughts of revenge.  His own goal is to survive his remaining sentence and find the daughter who continues to ignore him.  When the chance comes to escape in the company of Cacho, a young Mexican inmate with ties to a major cartel, Axel takes it, provoking a massive manhunt along the Rio Grande, and sending Axel on an unintended journey of discovery and reckoning many, many years overdue.  This award-winning series has been hailed by critics across the country for its brutal, fast-paced noir style and his insightful character development that elevate these books into something unique.  Publisher’s Weekly gave this series installment a starred review, saying “Blood loyalty, forgiveness, and the consequences of violence all figure in Blake’s outstanding fourth Border Noir featuring the Wolfes . . . Tough, muscular prose complements Blake’s powerful storytelling.”

Black Rock White City: The winner of the 2016 Miles Franklin Literary Award (Australia’s most prestigious literary award), A.S. Patric’s debut novel is one of those stories that brilliantly shifts focus, telling a huge, epic tale of dispossession and displacement among a whole people, and yet, a beautifully wrought tale of one family’s struggles in an unfamiliar suburbia.  Jovan and Suzana have fled war-torn Sarajevo, having lost their children, their standing as public intellectuals, and their connection to each other. Now working as cleaners in a suburb of Melbourne, they struggle to rebuild their lives under the painful hardships of immigrant life.  During a hot Melbourne summer Jovan’s janitorial work at a hospital is disrupted by mysterious acts of vandalism. But as the attacks become more violent and racially charged, he feels increasingly targeted, and taunted to interpret their meaning. Under tremendous pressure the couple struggle to keep their marriage together, but fear that they may never find peace from the ravages of war.   Dark and devastating at times, this book is also the story of those who continually chose to carry on, and find ways to endure, making it also a story of resilience–and one that is wholly unforgettable.  The Miles Franklin Literary Award Citation reads:  “A fresh and powerful exploration of the immigrant experience and Australian life, Black Rock White City explores the damages of war, the constraints of choice, the possibility of redemptive love and social isolation amid suburbia.”

Eastman Was Here: Alex Gilvarry’s book is a war story set during the Vietnam War, but unlike so many war stories, this one isn’t about a combatant.  Instead, it’s about Alan Eastman, a public intellectual, critic, philanderer, whose wife has taken their children and left, and who is facing an ever-deepening existential crisis.  So when he receives a call from an old professional rival offering him the chance to go to Vietnam to write the definitive account of the end of America’s longest war, Eastman leaps on the opportunity, seeing it as his chance to earn back his wife’s love and his flagging career in one fell swoop.   But instead of the return to form as a pioneering war correspondent that he had hoped for, he finds himself in Saigon, grappling with the same problems he thought he’d left back in New York.  Gilvarry writes with enormous compassion and insight, but he is also always ready to see the humor, both the dark and the absurdly funny, in his characters and his stories, defying the conventional trappings whatever genre into which he writes, and instead presenting a character who is both repellent and fascinating, and providing a story as heartbreaking as it is funny.  The Boston Globe agrees, saying in its review “Gilvarry has given us a portrait of toxic masculinity—one that feels as if it both belongs to a certain time and is still familiar. His Eastman is a riveting, loathsome presence who demands to be loved and remembered.”

Reincarnation Blues: As soon as I read Kirkus Reviews blurb for this book, I was hooked–and plenty of readers and critics alike have been coming up with wonderful praise for Michael Poore’s second novel of life…death…and whatever comes after.  Because in this world, we get a few more tries to get it right.  10,000 more tries, to be exact.  But Milo has been having some trouble, and is now left with only 5 chances left  to earn a place in the cosmic soul. If he doesn’t make the cut, oblivion awaits. But all Milo really wants is to fall forever into the arms of Death. Or Suzie, as he calls her.  More than just Milo’s lover throughout his countless layovers in the Afterlife, Suzie is literally his reason for living—as he dives into one new existence after another, praying for the day he’ll never have to leave her side again.  Every journey from cradle to grave offers Milo more pieces of the great cosmic puzzle—if only he can piece them together in time to finally understand what it means to be part of something bigger than infinity.  Kirkus Reviews is not alone in making the comparison it did when it described this book as “Tales of gods and men akin to Neil Gaiman’s Sandman as penned by a kindred spirit of Douglas Adams”, and the more comparisons are made to those two greats, the more eager I am to dive into Poore’s work!

 

Until next week, beloved patrons–happy reading!