The Story of a New Name by Elena Ferrante (2012)

The second part of the journey that is Lina and Elena.

Book Review: The Story of a New Name continues the brilliance of My Brilliant Friend; if you loved the first you'll love the second. Where the first book addressed "Childhood, Adolescence," we now move on to "Youth" with  the same characters. At the time of writing I'm halfway through the third book, so I don't know what I don't know. I do know that no moment is wasted. Events that occur earlier in the narrative, later reappear meaningfully.

For me, The Story of a New Name wasn't quite up to the first volume. I can't lie: My Brilliant Friend left me anticipating perfection. Ferrante can no longer rely on the newness of the first book, and here perhaps 50 pages could've been lost (which pages I have no idea -- I'm not Ms. Ferrante) without harm. There was a stretch where I felt that I was beginning to tread water, that I'd seen this before. Chapter 83 needed to come just a wee bit quicker. Also, the attraction of the character of Nino escapes me. What are his irresistible qualities? Finally, and most significant (possible spoiler alert) there was a moment (yes, just one in 471 pages) that didn't work for me, that lost the verisimilitude, that wasn't believable. Unfortunately it occurs at the pivotal moment, the hinge, of the novel. But I must admit I've always had an unreasonable phobia of the older man/younger woman trope, so maybe it's just me and the scene worked fine for you. Those trivial bits aside, I read The Story of a New Name hungrily, the juice running down my chin. And a realization. Everyone, including me, describes the Neapolitan Novels as the story of friendship. But I don't think that's quite right, as it's not like any friendship I've had or seen, and the word is insufficient. It's the story of a relationship between two women, an interrelationship, an interdependence, a connection between two people. An attempt at understanding and connecting to the infinite complexity of another human. Contact. Elena writes that she read novels that "presented intense lives, profound conversations, a phantom reality more appealing than my real life." What has Ferrante written in The Story of a New Name? Perhaps all will come clear in the next book.  [4½★]

Nine Stories by J.D. Salinger (1953)

Short stories written by the author of The Catcher in the Rye in the late Forties and early Fifties.

Book Review: Nine Stories is superficially and deceptively simple, but contains layers that reward re-reading. The stories are full of heart and feeling, yet are carefully and complexly written if you go in for that kind of thing. As much as I enjoy The Catcher in the Rye, I wonder if Nine Stories might not actually be a better choice for study in high schools. First of all, this is a story collection. Salinger repeats and unravels themes in the stories, exploring aspects and permutations of each. Foremost, though not belabored, is the damage caused by war. Many of the characters are injured or alienated, outsiders, which results in a perception of the world different from the norm. Materialism, shallowness, superficiality ("phoniness" for Catcher fans) are seen as destructive; recovery is sought in innocence and childhood. While the outsiders in Nine Stories seek contact and connection, Salinger suggests a return to youth and innocence isn't always possible, as change and growth are inevitable. But while coming of age may be necessary, the dirt, deceit, and loss of decency found in adulthood remain snares for the unwary, and result in the ambiguity of some of the story endings. The more I thought about Nine Stories, the better and more rewarding it became. Each story has value. For those interested in the world Salinger created, several of the stories involve the Glass family.  [5★]

The Daughter of Time by Josephine Tey (1951)

Inspector Grant, laid up in hospital with a broken leg, solves a 400 year old mystery without leaving his bed.

Book Review: The Daughter of Time, the fifth Inspector Grant mystery, is widely acclaimed as one of the great mystery novels of all time. While I wouldn't go quite that far (as much as I love Josephine Tey), it fits the established pattern of each Grant adventure being better than the one before. This is the best yet. If you enjoy hissing at Richard III, if you're enchanted by the mystery of the two little princes in the Tower, if you're enamored of the Wars of the Roses or the Tudors, this is the detective novel for you. The Daughter of Time ("truth is the daughter of time" - Francis Bacon) is as much history as mystery and the better for being both. The immobile Grant is fed his archaic evidence by an energetic and enthused history student rushing between hospital and library. In many hands this would be on the dry side, but the author makes an almost wholly successful effort at injecting Grant's historical research with murder-mystery excitement. Tey is, as usual, a product of time and place and not perfectly politically correct (the Irish come in for a bit of a drubbing); at times Grant and his assistant seem a little too smug and come off as a little too self-righteous, but these are quibbles. The Daughter of Time is written with Tey's usual lapidary exposition and wit (" 'I've no patience with you,' she said patiently"). A steady theme is the unreliability of our historical accounts ("when you tell someone the true facts of a mythical tale they are indignant not with the teller but with you"). Tey finds and shares examples of historical fake news from Scotland, Wales, and America as part of the story. All in all, it's a notably entertaining and rewarding, if occasionally academic, reading experience.  [4½★]

Woolgathering by Patti Smith (1992)

A brief poetic memoir of childhood and creation by the author of Just Kids.

Book Review: Woolgathering has been sadly overlooked. Patti Smith's recent memoirs, Just Kids and M Train have been wonderfully, award winningly successful. Perhaps if this book's cover had been in black and white and muted tones with a shorter title it wouldn't've been mislaid, for Woolgathering is the mother of those books. Here Smith writes of childhood awe, a touchstone of her creativity: "All were remnants of our childhood or some spirited place." She also writes, as she did in Just Kids, of the magic and inner power of things, objects, so many becoming talismans in her eyes ("I always felt it was in the object itself. Some piece of magic that was animated by my touch. In this manner I found magic in all things."). Perhaps it was imagination, perhaps second sight or hallucinations, but as a girl Smith saw things that no one else saw: "They were people like none I had ever seen, in strange archaic cap and dress." She is what I think of as a true artist (some might say "natural"), believing in the strength of her shamanic power, some sacred communication, her faith that the truth comes through her words. Unconcerned whether a line may be cliche or obvious or regarded as trite, for she knew that poetry is blossoming through her. I can't see Smith writing a line and thinking to herself, "Oh, they won't like this." She trusts and is true to herself and hang the rest. These pages are remembrances, often poetry and prose poems, a memoir of moments. Many of the images in Woolgathering are from childhood, others are contemporaneous, and all resonate with Smith's fascination with art, creativity, and expression. Robert Mapplethorpe appears. Her impressions are illustrated with her own photographs. Although extremely short, this book may still seem like a bit of stew, with a mixture of times and characters, song lyrics, poetry, and prose. In describing her own efforts at creation, Patti Smith has the power to stimulate the same feeling in her readers. She describes herself as "a solitary shepherdess gathering bits of wool plucked by the hand of the wind from the belly of a lamb." If you were stirred by Patti Smith's recent memoirs, Woolgathering is worth finding.  [4★]

My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante (2011)

The first of four parts of the story of two friends, Elena and Lina, growing up, living an uneasy friendship, the most important object to both of them.

Book Review: My Brilliant Friend is simply and massively the tortuous character study of a friendship (though more than a friendship). The setting is also significant, but the plot is secondary. The events that occur are less important: what is significant is how the characters react to those events, mentally, emotionally, spiritually, and physically. In my less elitist moments, I believe that all humans are infinite, and in My Brilliant Friend Elena Ferrante explores the infinite nature of a friendship between two women, going a quantum leap beyond what should've been expected. An intricate and demanding friendship. As does Tolstoy, she delves into the thoughts, waverings, perseverance, emotions, fears, determinations, endurance. Over cups, we could talk for hours comparing and contrasting Elena and Lina. Both are bright. One is careful, diligent, cautious, prudent, enduring; the other is wild, brilliant, intrepid, heedless, mercurial. But this list is a single, small scratch on the surface of the two and their relationship. Only the four books of this series can encompass the whole. My Brilliant Friend is the ultimate response to the Bechdel test. As this is only the first of four books, I don't want to say much more here. I feel I have a long enlightenment ahead of me. In her Tolstoyan way, Ferrante has taken on an epic endeavor.  [5★]

Lucy by Jamaica Kincaid (1990)

A young woman emigrates from the British Caribbean to the U.S.

Book Review: Lucy is a story of contradiction, partly truth and partly fiction. A story of a strong woman, an angry woman, who just wanted her mother to love her. Anger is the subtext of the entire tale, both the anger of coming from the colonial world to the "promised land," and the familiar and familial anger of a child ("I already had a mother who loved me, and I had come to see her love as a burden."). Lucy is both understandably and surprisingly angry. She is assertive, but also her own worst enemy. Lucy can be cruel and try to hurt people. She expects others to understand her (sometimes she just doesn't care), but has trouble understanding others. Mature, but child-like. She both loves and hates her homeland, she both loves and hates the U.S. When she receives a letter from home she thinks: "If I could put enough miles between me and the place from which that letter came ... would I not be free to take everything just as it came and not see hundreds of years in every gesture, every word spoken, every face?" She sees her own contradictions and her own strength, even as she is both self-righteous and self-pitying. She says her employer "was the kindest person I had ever known," but is happy to see her "getting a sip of [her] own bad medicine." Kincaid's Lucy is auto-biographical in parts, but also one of the more complex, complicated, incomplete characters ever written. This is a bitter story at times, but also warm and rewarding. Lucy is the story of a 19-year-old woman growing, learning, changing, becoming, transforming into who she will be, moving both geographically, and in her emotions and psyche.  [4★]

Kitchen by Banana Yoshimoto (1988)

Two stories of love, loss, and lament.

Book Review: Kitchen is a novella, paired here with a short story (or short novella), "Moonlight Shadow." The two stories are related in theme and have a warm, naive, engaging tone. Both stories are reminiscent of Murakami, with a heightened sense of drama and dream-like reality, though the similarity ended there. Kitchen was enjoyable, but seemed written by a young author for a young audience (Yoshimoto was 24 when this was published). The story veers easily into cliche, stereotype, and romanticized death; being an orphan is not romantic. An entire class of cooking students are portrayed as exactly the same person: "their smiling faces like flowers, learning to cook, absorbed in their little troubles and perplexities, they fall in love and marry." This writing is condescending, dismissive, painted with a broad brush, a young person squeezing the infinity of each class member's human experience into a single slot. Later the same character says, "My tone was angry, but my eyes betrayed tenderness." She may have felt tenderness, but unless she was staring into a mirror instead of at her friend, she has no idea how her eyes appeared. At another point washing dishes, she "cried and cried. Of course it wasn't having to wash all those dishes; I was crying for having been left behind in the night, paralyzed with loneliness." Paralyzed? Or crying and washing dishes? Another: "When you're traveling, every night the air is clear and crisp, the mind serene." Japan is still in the world: when you're traveling, every night is foggy, rainy, or snowing, the mind is exhausted and fretting about the next connection. Have you been on a Japanese train? One last example (of many): of course a transgender character not only is the most beautiful woman in the world (hello Murakami!), but must dramatically pay for her transgression. My point is not to bash a story I enjoyed, but simply to observe that this is an early effort for youthful readers. "Moonlight Shadow," on the other hand, exhibits all the touching maturity and insight of which Yoshimoto is capable, and was lacking in Kitchen. Here again she seems to stumble into cliche: "I loved Hitoshi more than life itself." But in the context of this story, I wondered just what may be meant by that soap opera line. Life isn't worth living without the loved one? She only felt alive when with him? That any sacrifice was worth being with him? Yoshimoto invests that well-worn line with more weight than it can normally carry. She investigates and relives the soul ripping sorrow of loss, letting the reader feel it also. That visceral, stomach-turning moment when waking and realizing that the loved one's loss is is still horribly real, and life comes crashing down: "Worse than that was the shock of awakening. I dreaded the deep gloom that would fall when I remembered he was gone ... so I tried not to wake up." Sleep is escape. Yoshimoto captures that feeling of new love, first love: "When we were in each other's arms, I knew something that was beyond words. It was the mystery of being close to someone who was not family." And she knows the weariness of grief, of wrenching thoughts that refuse release: "I was so tired that I couldn't bear to think about it. I was truly exhausted. But still ... more than anything, I wanted to evade those thoughts." Both stories are entertaining, but "Moonlight Shadow" is the more mature, fulfilled work, that shows the potential and promise every young writer dreams of achieving.  [3½★]

Naked Earth by Eileen Chang (1956)

Young lovers navigate the beginning of Mao's revolution in China.

Book Review: Naked Earth is beautifully and superbly written. Every page has some small brilliancy, a turn of phrase, a description realer than reality, a moment of wisdom, a piercing insight into human nature, psychology, behavior. Eileen Chang is a virtuoso and her work is a graduate seminar in writing. But there is some small something missing here, not quite there, lurking at the shadowy fringes. I know from the book's history that this was a commissioned work of propaganda, though except for a time or two I never thought "propaganda." It seemed grabbed from life, as authentic as Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress, which also seemed genuine. What keeps it from being "mere" propaganda is both the verisimilitude and the individuality of human experiences, the true-to-life details of human existence. If anything, the doomed dystopian love story reminded me of Orwell's 1984, but given its reality, Naked Earth was better. What's missing, I'm guessing is that this was not the story Chang would have chosen to tell -- beautifully, brilliantly written, but she would've put it some place else and taken a different path. So while each page is worth the price of admission, as a whole the book may be less compelling for readers without some knowledge of Chinese history. Naked Earth, in sum, attests to Chang's brilliance as a writer. Gorgeous, genius, gentle, but missing just a sliver of the writer's heart.  [3½★]