A Real Story of a Real Family

Book Review: The Distancers by Lee Sandlin

According to the commercials put out by a certain genealogy website, your family secrets are only a mouse-click away.
If only that were true.

While some public records ARE available online, they are often filled with misspellings, incorrect dates, and other errors. And even if that were not the case, they are still public records. The real family stories, the ones that really matter, are the ones that are not in plain sight.

In The Distancers, Lee Sandlin exposes some of his family's untold and unseen stories and brings his own past to life. Life for an immigrant family in 19th century America was full of challenges - some rose to meet them, others took the path of least resistance. One family member might diligently work at the opportunities that presented themselves, while a sibling might decide to coast on the work of others. In other words, times (and people) then were not much different than today.

Sadly, not everyone's family has made a mark on the history of this country that can be found in history books. The people that built the railroads and the highways and the factories were not the knighted individuals that made the fortunes and whose names are known to all; the people that built this country were (and are) the ones that did the every day business of working and living. What we see in The Distancers are the people that went the distance, and still do, keeping the wheels of progress turning. Every family has left a legacy, if not in the history books, then in those who still bear their name, and their heritage. That is what real families, and real family history are made of.

The Gulag, Chinese Style

Book Review: For a Song and a Hundred Songs by Liao Yiwu

This year marks the twenty-fourth anniversary of the Tienanmen Square protests. It seems a very long time ago that the newscasts showed the images of unarmed Chinese students facing armed soldiers, of a solitary man facing down a line of tanks.

In truth, it has been a a very long time - an entire generation has grown up without first-hand knowledge of the events of May and June 1989.

The simple fact that so many people are unaware of or have forgotten these events make a work like For a Song and a Hundred Songs critically important. In the effort to make China (and it's 1.3 billion potential customers) a business partner, the world has turned a blind eye to the political abuses of the recent past, and the present. Liao Yiwu has crafted a work that forces one to look beyond the facade of business as usual, into the lives of the dissidents and political prisoners whose crime was one of ideas.

Much of Hundred Songs is reminiscent of another tale of political prisoners: One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich. Like the prisoners in the Soviet labor camps, Chinese dissidents were held without benefit of trial for vaguely defined crimes like 'hooliganism', or of being 'counter-revolutionaries' Just as in the Gulag, political prisoners are held side-by-side with violent criminals and were often victimized by them. Like Shukov in Ivan Denisovich, Liao Yiwu struggles to maintain his sense of individuality in a system whose sole purpose is to erase it. Toward the end of his imprisonment, when a friend questions his indifference, Yiwu replies "I feel like I have no past". Surviving day-to-day crowds out considerations of both the future and the past.

Hundred Songs gives us much to think about, both in terms of our relations with China, and with the freedoms that we take for granted as Americans. In light of recent events in the United States, perhaps this needs to be considered a cautionary tale. As Liao Yiwu says, "true freedom lies in the heart". Whether as Americans or citizens of the world, we forget that at our own peril.

A Slow Slide into the Surreal

Book Review: Stoker's Manuscript by Royce Prouty

Joseph Barkeley leads a somewhat predictable life, grounded in reality and based on facts. He knows old books and manuscripts, he is an expert in his field.

Then, slowly but surely, he finds his life taking a different track into unknown territory. In the hands of novice author Royce Prouty, Stoker's Manuscript has going Barkeley veering off the rails entirely as he pursues the mysterious clues hidden within the first draft of Bram Stoker's ground-breaking novel.

Prouty moves his protagonist into the surreal environment of vampire-ridden Romania with care, gradually adding equal parts history and horror until the atmosphere is thick as blood. And the blood flows thickly as Barkeley struggles with his own past while trying to find a way out of his dilemma.

Through it all, author Prouty makes the transition from civilized reality to the horrific seem almost natural. The reader moves smoothly through the story, only to suddenly find himself surrounded by vampires. It is like taking a casual walk around the block, following well-known steps, only to look up and find oneself in another city, or another time, or another reality.

An excellent first novel, Stoker's Manuscript will have you turning pages through the night. You might want to save your reading for the daytime though.

A Russian Crime Novel

Book Review: The Case of the General's Thumb by Andey Kurkov

This was my first exposure to Andrey Kurkov, and my first exploration of modern Russian literature more recent than The Gulag Archipelago. [Note: although he writes in Russian, Andrey Kurkov is Ukrainian] It was interesting to see what I have been missing.

Everyone is more or less aware of the English and American crime and espionage genres (spies and crooks oft go hand in hand); they are well established and have their particular trademarks. The Case of the General's Thumb introduced me to a new cultural and literary milieu - and after some adjustment I have to say it was a pleasant surprise.

Some of the adjustment was cultural. Character dialog patterns were unfamiliar, and the settings unknown. It was truly foreign territory in many regards. An American reader of an American novel will understand often unspoken cues to events and cultural commonalities; I had to work sometimes to put pieces together.

The writing style and pacing of General's Thumb were also different than I was used to. Part of this may have been due to translation into English, but I believe it was mostly a stylistic difference, and it was simply that -- different.

Different can be good, and General's Thumb is a thoroughly enjoyable read. Kurkov gives us a story that is fast-paced, with enough plot intricacies to keep the reader on his/her toes. The characters may be foreign to American readers, but they live and die by the same human aspirations and failings we all do. If you want a new spin on crime novels, check this out.

In a Word: Exceptional

Book Review: I Can't Complain by Elinor Lipman

When reading a book, I usually find myself coming back to what I call the "Three Cs" - Clarity (how well it is written), Consistency (do the characters behave in character), and Cohesiveness (does the whole thing stick together). I have found over a lifetime of reading (and I am past the half-century mark, thank you) that these measures pretty much apply to any book, in any genre.

Elinor Lipman's I Can't Complain hits all three and throws a few bonuses as well. Of course, since these are personal essays, the main character stays in character - it's Elinor after all. Her writing is concise [an undocumented C], clear, and simply a joy to read. And the whole thing sticks together like Silly Putty.

More than that, Elinor Lipman takes the everyday and makes it ... more than that. Events do not need to be extraordinary to make them meaningful. I think the present generation has lost sight of the simple fact that the simple things and the basic emotions that go with them are important in their own right. Everything does not have to be an adrenaline pumping heart-pounding YouTube event to be important in a person's life. To expect otherwise is, I believe, missing the point of life entirely.

Thank you, Ms. Lipman, for writing about what it is really like to live life, and to be aware you are living it.

Josephine Marcus Earp - Untold

Book Review: Lady at the O.K. Corral by Ann Kirschner

In her attempt to write a biography of Josephine Marcus Earp, author Ann Kirschner gives us a mix of history, folk tales, and family lore, with a touch of educated guesswork. The result, Lady at the O.K. Corral, ends up equal parts history and historical fiction, with a not altogether satisfying portion of either.

The book is strongest in the Tombstone chapters, where the legendary Wyatt Earp is heavily documented. The wealth of historical information on Wyatt makes the character of Josephine sharper by association, although the factual basis for her is weakest here. To be fair, the documentation of women's role in the Old West is sparse to say the least; they were regarded as little more than bit players on the Western stage.

As Wyatt's role in the story starts to be less important, Lady begins to lag -- supposition and third party accounts do not a biography make. The author frequently remarks how Josephine was closed-mouth about her own story, but the scarcity of information makes the story a little too threadbare. There is a great story here, but it never fully emerges.

In the end, Lady of the O.K. Corral is more of a fictionalized biography, without the cohesiveness of either a straight biography or historical fiction. The genre CAN work; I thought that the fictionalized biography of Irene Nemirovsky, The Mirador: Dreamed Memories of Irene Nemirovsky by Her Daughter, was an exceptional book. Lady seems to want to hide behind the facts rather than build on them, and fails to embrace the intriguing personality of Josephine as a result.

A Tale of Two Women

Book Review: Eighty Days by Matthew Goodman

The story of not just one, but two historic trips around the world, Eighty Days is much more than a travelogue. In following the two protagonists, Nelly Bly and Elizabeth Bisland, in their race around the globe, Matthew Goodman gives us a close-up view of the challenges facing women at the end of the nineteenth century.

Not just ANY two women either. Nelly Bly was a small town American girl, who fought her way into the position of journalist through hard work and determination. Her room in New York was on an unpaved road far from the newspaper offices in Manhattan. "Her grammar was rough, her punctuation erratic", but she persevered.

Elizabeth Bisland also lived in New York; although her apartment was only a few blocks away from Nelly's room in physical distance, it was miles away in social standing. In addition, she was "highly literary, with refined tastes", with a family background to match.

These two women, dissimilar in so many ways, had one thing in common: they had both managed to find their way into that bastion of masculinity, the newsroom. And by "find their way" we mean they persisted in the face of incredible resistance to the very presence of "the weaker sex" in their chosen profession.

Eighty Days is more than the story of two women cutting a path around the world - it is the story of two women from vastly different backgrounds who, each in their own individual way, together cut a path for generations of women to come.