The Thirty-Nine Steps (1915)

"At Oxford Circus I looked up into the spring sky and I made a vow. I would give the Old Country another day to fit me into something; if nothing happened, I would take the next boat for the Cape."

John Buchan's The Thirty-Nine Steps is a fast paced spy thriller/political drama following a plot that may lead to the outbreak of a world war. It centres on Richard Hannay, an expat recently returned to England after several years in South Africa, drawn into a plot of international intrigue by an American who promptly ends up dead. Seemingly framed for the murder, Hannay goes on the run, dodging both the police and the agents of the conspiracy, narrowly escaping capture (or worse) several times as he struggles to unravel the plot that he has unwittingly stumbled into.

Buchan's prose is simple and unadorned, taking the reader from one incredible scene to the next switfly and with little fuss. Although the novel deals with a plot to assassinate a world leader, which in turn will lead to war, and was published during as the First World War was entering into its second year, there's a lightness to it and it plays out like a caper. One of the more entertaining aspects of the novel is the way Buchan details how Hannay shifts from one persona to another, altering his appearance on the fly and creating new characters for himself to play, although this sense that the adventure is something of a lark is somewhat difficult to reconcile with the seriousness of the plot, especially as the story nears its conclusion.

The Thirty-Nine Steps has been adapted to the screen numerous times and it's easy to understand why. Despite some minor inconsistencies with respect to tone, it's an exciting and taut thriller, the archetypal one man army/man on the run, type story, and Hannay is an interesting and engaging character. Hannay would go on to star in four more novels by Buchan, further exploring his wartime adventures, though The Thirty-Nine Steps is the best known and most enduring of the stories. Although parts of the novel sometimes feel a bit cliched in the light of 2011, The Thirty-Nine Steps holds up remarkably well and is well worth revisiting.

The Fall of the West: The Death of the Roman Superpower (2009)

"Rome's fate seems to act as a warning that strength and success will always prove transitory in the end, and that civilization will not automatically triumph. It was no coincidence that one of Winston Churchill's most famous speeches from 1940 foretold that Britain's defeat would result in 'a new Dark Age' - particularly apt since many believed that the Roman Empire had been destroyed by German barbarians in the fifth century."

Long after its fall from dominance, Rome continues to fascinate the imagination. It is the standard against which all great empires are measured and its fate is still not completely understood - at least not in a way that can be universally agreed upon by historians. Adrian Goldsworthy tackles the challenge of trying to explain why and how Rome fell, exploring four hundred years of history, of triumphs and reversals, of enemies from without and enemies from within. With an expert's eye he guides the reader from a united and powerful nation to one split apart, half strong, half falling away piece by piece.

The question of why Rome fell from power (or, at least from the overwhelming power it once enjoyed), is not simple to answer; it's more of a series of answers. First of all, there's the matter of size. Rome occupied a large part of the world - too large to maintain given both the technology available at the time (things like air travel and the internet have made the world a much smaller place now, but armies and information moved considerably slower in the time of Rome's empire), and the assertions of autonomy by natives of the occupied territories. There is also the deteriorization of Rome's social structure, a watering down, if you will, of the standards by which Emperors were selected. Where once Emperors were borne out of the highest spheres of Roman society, by the end of the Empire the man who who was best able to gain the support of the military took the title, regardless of his station in life. Although this isn't to suggest that someone not of the highest rank of society is somehow less "worthy" to rule, the fact that military support came to play such a dominant role in how rule of the Empire was decided meant that usurpation became easier and probably more frequently inevitable.

There were many other reasons for Rome's fall, reasons which Goldsworthy takes pains to explore, but those are the two that ultimately stand out, a cancer from without and a cancer from within working together in concert over the course of four centuries to eat away at Rome's power and influence. Goldsworthy's accounting of Rome's decline, and the various personalities and factions that led to it, is thorough, giving as detailed a picture as I imagine is possible. Though his prose is sometimes a bit dry, the story itself is so fascinating that it hardly matters. The Fall of the West is a must read for anyone with even a passing interest in Roman history.

The Beauty of Humanity Movement (2010)

"Old Man Hung makes the best pho in the city and has done so for decades. Where he once had a shop, though, he no longer does, because the rents are exorbitant, both the hard rents and the soft - the bribes a proprietor must pay to the police in this new era of freedom."

Camilla Gibb's latest novel, The Beauty of Humanity Movement, explores the classic trope of Old World vs. New. In it, American raised Maggie Ly returns to Vietnam in search of information about her father, an artist who disappeared into Communist re-education camps after the fall of Saigon. Her search leads her to Old Man Hung, an itinerant pho seller who once owned a shop frequented by artists, but whose memory of Maggie's father and his fate is, at best, spotty. Maggie is brought into Hung's circle, which includes Tu, a young Vietnamese tour guide who is caught in the clash between the conservative values of his community and the ever growing American cultural influences, and who joins in Maggie's search for answers.

Stories such as this can sometimes be problematic, in that they leave themselves open to accusations of cultural appropriation, but Gibb tells the story with a great deal of sensitivity and respect and the complete absence of exoticization is one of the novel's many strengths. Gibb crafts a story and characters that compliment Vietnam's complex history, showing a nation that has been the victim of forces both outside and within, but also a nation with enough strength at its core to endure. The nation portrayed in the story is one in transition, the features of hardline Communism still apparent in some aspects, but one that is also begining to embrace Capitalism. It is also a nation struggling against popular perception of itself as provincial and unsophisticated, an image which artists such as Maggie's father and the others who frequented Hung's shop challenged with their work, but which was buried during the course of cultural cleansing re-education.

Gibb's prose is engaging and the story often powerful. The characters and the community in the novel are crafted with care, with Gibb slowly revealing the depths of both as the story progresses. Though The Beauty of Humanity Movement never quite attains the weight of her previous work, 2005's Sweetness In The Belly, it's still an excellent read and certainly one of the best books of 2010.

Three Day Road (2005)

"They gave me medicine for the pain, and I learned how to fly in a new way. The cost this time is that I can no longer live without the medicine, and in a few days there will be none left. Their morphine eats men."

Set during World War I, Joseph Boyden's Three Day Road centers on two friends: Xavier and Eli. They meet as children in residential school, later escaping to live with Xavier's aunt, Niska, in the bush. Though Xavier would be happy to remain in the bush, continuing to learn from Niska, the lure of the war in Europe is too great for Eli and he talks Xavier into joining him. They go overseas where their skill as marksmen allows them to become snipers, but they quickly start to split, heading in two different directions. Eli is admired for his skill and his bravery, but eventually goes mad with bloodlust and drug addiction; Xavier is overshadowed by his friend, growing resentful of living in Eli's shadow and also become scared of him, of what he has shown himself to be capable of.

The novel is split into two narratives. One takes place in the past, charting Xavier and Eli's experiences in the war. The other takes place in the novel's present, following Niska and Xavier as they journey back into the bush, Xavier suffering greatly from the physical injuries he's returned with and the psychological injuries of his memories and his impending withdrawal from morphine. The two narratives function not only to tell two different, but intimately connected, stories, but also as a contrast between the traditional way of life embraced by Niska and the "modern" way of life dictated by the white governing culture.

Boydon's prose is crisp and vivid, with the passages detailing battle scenes that paint an intense picture. The action sequences are excellently rendered, but Boyden is equally adept at the story's many quieter moments, moments that dig deep into the psyches of the characters, giving nuance and shading to their personalities and their relationships. Three Day Road is an incredibly engaging and moving novel and the writing is so assured and skilled that it's hard to believe this is a first novel. For this effort he won the Rogers' Writers Trust Fiction Prize, and his second novel, Through Black Spruce picked up the Giller Prize in 2008. After reading and thoroughly enjoying Three Day Road, Through Black Spruce is now at the top of my "must read" list.

The Sentimentalists (2009)

"Overall, I would have to say that it had come as a disappointment to live within the particularities of a life; to find that the simple arithmetic of things... was not so simple. That it was not, in fact, combination alone that increased the territory of living in the world. And that love did not, of its own accord, increase with time."

In The Sentimentalists a daughter struggles to bridge the gap between herself and the father was has been absent for much of her life. It is not a story of simmering resentment, however, but one of a loving, if strained, relationship between a parent and child. The daughter has recently had her heart broken and retreats to the home where she, her sister, and their father, Napoleon, spent many summers and where her father now lives in the company of Henry, the father of Napoleon's friend Owen, who died while the two were serving in Vietnam. Napoleon's experiences in Vietnam, of which he has always been reluctant to speak, fascinate his daughter, who believes that they might help illuminate the issues that have been plaguing him ever since.

In telling the story Skibsrud jumps back and forth in time w much of it taking place in the novel's present day, during the narrator's time with her father and Henry. The present day sections are bittersweet, as the relationship between father and daughter has come to a comfortable, loving place despite some difficulties in the past, but Napoleon has been diagnosed with cancer and quickly deteriorates. A large section of the story concerns Napoleon's memories of Vietnam, which are somewhat vague, and the novel ends with a transcript of Napoleon's participation in a military trial, which illuminates some of the more obscure parts of his memory but also demonstrates that there's a bit of inconsistency between what he remembered immediately after the fact and what he remembers from a distance of a few decades.

The Sentimentalists ends on a very strong note, with Skibsrud focusing on the way that time can color and alter memories. The beginning of the novel is not quite as strong as the story takes quite a while to really pick up steam. Personally, I found that I wasn't really engaged with the story until nearly half-way through and though I ultimately thought it was fairly good, I was somewhat disappointed by it. Obviously the fact that the novel won last year's Giller prize means that there are people who a very enthusiastic about it but it didn't particularly speak to me.

The Flying Troutmans (2008)

"Yeah, so things have fallen apart."

With its first sentence The Flying Troutmans announces itself as a brilliantly comic work of weariness. It is told through the eyes of Hattie Troutman, brought back to Canada from Paris when the mental health of her older sister, Min, takes a turn for the worse and Min's kids, Logan and Thebes, ask for her help. Min, who has a history of suicide attempts and depression, is promptly checked into a hospital while Hattie sets off with the kids on a roadtrip to the States in search of their father, who was run off by Min when Thebes was still an infant. The trio have several minor adventures along the way and, of course, Hattie comes to terms with her own past with Min and discovers her capacity to pick up the slack her sister has left behind.

Author Miriam Toews tells the story with a lot of humor. Hattie doesn't always know the right thing to do or how best to interact with her niece and nephew, not to mention how to balance her own problems (the boyfriend she left behind in Paris, who was supposed to be going to India to find himself but actually just told her that so that she wouldn't feel compelled to stay) against the more pressing problems of her family. The kids have developed strategies for coping with their mother's problems as best they can, but there's only so much they can do as their world collapses around them. Logan is an understandably angry and often withdrawn kid, though not without feeling, and Thebes is an eccentric with an aversion to bathing. Hattie does the best she can for them but is often a bit out of her depth and her self-deprecating view of the situation helps keep the simmering tensions from overpowering the characters and the story itself.

Toews has a great handle on the characters and the story and does it with such ease that it appears effortless. Though the tone is largely light and humorous, she doesn't let characterization suffer. The characters of The Flying Troutmans are fully fleshed out, the depths of their selves and relationships explored with great care and sensitivity. The Flying Troutmans won 2008's Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize and is certainly very deserving of such recognition.

The Winter Vault (2009)

"When ground is too frozen for the digging of graves, said Lucjan, the dead wait in these winter vaults... The winter dead wait, said Lucjan, for the earth to relent and receive them. They wait, in histories of thousands of pages, where the word love is never mentioned."

Anne Michael's The Winter Vault is a story about dismantling and recreating and what is lost forever in between. It centres on Avery and Jean, a Canadian couple who travel to Egypt so that he can participate in the relocation of the temple at Abu Simbel. While in Egypt the couple suffers a devastating loss, one which is compounded by the psychological impact of the relocation project, how the act of taking the temple apart has corrupted its beauty, and how the dislocation of farmers living along the Nile has devastated those communities. The marriage is broken by these events, though not irreparably, and on their return to Canada, Avery and Jean separate and begin drifting. Jean becomes involved with Lucjan, a Polish artist who has his own tales of loss and suffering, but her love for Avery is not quite dead, it's simply waiting to be rediscovered and reconstructed.

Michaels, a celebrated poet before publishing her debut novel, the great Fugitive Pieces, has a dreamy style that blurs the line between the characters' interior and exterior lives. The story flows easily through different time periods and locations - in addition to their time in Egypt and their separate lives afterwards, the novel also explores the beginning of Avery and Jean's relationship and some of their lives before meeting; it also spends a great deal of time with Lucjan in war torn Poland - and between character perspectives. Jean ends up carrying the bulk of the narrative, but Avery, Lucjan, and several supporting characters including Avery's mother and Lucjan's group of Polish expat friends, are all drawn with clarity and compassion.

Michaels' style is engaging and passages of The Winter Vault are achingly beautiful and profound. That being said, however, the language does sometimes get a little too densely poetic. This doesn't happen frequently, but there are passages where it reads like there's one brush stroke too many. For the most part, though, The Winter Vault is a beautiful and intensely readable novel.

Annabel (2010)

"After the operation, Wayne felt the power of names in a new way. His father ate his evening toast, sometimes with a kipper. Jacinta crocheted. They did not look outside at the night. Wayne tried to remember a time before he knew the word for sky. You explained away the mystery of the night, he thought, by naming its parts: darkness, Little Dipper, silver birch."

Kathleen Winter's Annabel is a delicate and sensitively told story of ambiguity. It centers on Wayne Blake, born with both male and female sex organs and raised as a boy by his parents, Jacinta and Treadway. Treadway is the one who makes the decision to raise the baby as a male and then spends Wayne's childhood trying to impress upon him the ways to be a "man." Jacinta, meanwhile, longs for the daughter who never was while becoming lonelier and lonelier in her marriage and Thomasina, the neighbor who delivered Wayne and is privy to the family's secret, becomes a beacon of acceptance for Wayne, though she struggles over how much to tell him.

Identity is obviously a major theme in Annabel and Winter allows both Wayne's male identity and his female identity, known as Annabel, to flower as the novel progresses. Though the secrecy that surrounds him for much of his life causes him some pain, primarily through his inability to understand why it is that he seems to be a frequent disappointment to his father, Wayne is more or less at peace with his nature. He is not afraid or ashamed of his female self, though he longs to embrace that identity more fully than he feels that society would allow.

Annabel is a complex, thought provoking, and touching character study. Winter deals with the subject in a direct way and allows her characters to become fully fleshed and distinctly human. Annabel is a wonderful book about the yearning to belong, one which is relatable to anyone. It will grip from the first page and remain with you long after you've reached the last.

George, Nicholas and Wilhelm: Three Royal Cousins and the Road to World War I (2009)

"It was not a good moment for monarchies. Within Germany, the kings of Bavaria and Wurttemberg had been deposed; the ruling grand dukes of Coburg, Hesse and Mecklenburg-Strelitz had all abdicated, and the latter had then shot himself. Emperor Karl of Austria-Hungary... had abdicated on Armistice Day. Ferdinand, self-styled 'tsar' of Bulgaria... also went that month. George's cousin 'Tino,' King of Greece, had abdicated in 1917... In Turkey, Sultan Mehmed V had died in May; his brother and successor, Mehmed VI, would be deposed in 1922. As Armistice Day crowds came to Buckingham Palace to cheer, George was the only emperor still standing on his balcony."

Miranda Carter's George, Nicholas and Wilhelm: Three Royal Cousins and the Road to World War I is a book of remarkable depth and breadth, examining one of the most volatile and violent periods in European history. Though the title may suggest that its focus is primarily on one generation of royals, it goes deeper than that, reaching back to George's father and grandmother - King Edward VII and Queen Victoria, respectively - to paint a picture of relationships in flux and political destinies in the process of being shaped.

Carter takes great care in drawing the characters in this book, charting their development as the modern world is born and revealing the sharp contrasts between the public figures and the real men who existed in the shadows. All three cousins, though particularly Nicholas and Wilhelm who ascended to their respective thrones and gained actual power rather than the ceremonial power enjoyed by George, attempt to cut impressive, dominating figures within their countries, though in reality each is wrecked with insecurity and an inability to focus on the actual issues involved in running a government. As the story progresses towards the outbreak of World War I, it becomes clear just how little power the three ultimately had as they find themselves swept up in the changing political tides, unable to do anything to prevent the destruction of the age of kings.

Three Cousins covers a lot of ground and explores the complexities of a lot of relationships, not just between members of the various royal families (which, in the grand scheme of things, are really just one large extended family, as demonstrated by the family trees Carter provides) but also between the royals and various politicans and courtiers. Although Carter can sometimes be a bit repetitive with respect to how she describes various figures, her writing style is engaging and she relates the story with a sly wit that makes the book immensely readable. Three Cousins should be considered an essential read for anyone with an interest in World War I and the evolution/meaning of monarchy in the modern age.

The Golden Mean (2009)

"'Moderation and mediocrity are not the same. Think of the extremes as caricatures, if that helps. The mean, what we seek, is that which is not a caricature.'"

Annabel Lyon's much acclaimed (and rightly so) The Golden Mean is the story of two great men: Aristotle and Alexander the Great. It is told from Aristotle's point-of-view and explores the period of time in which he was a tutor to the young Alexander, at the time the heir apparent to the powerful King Philip. Both characters are intelligent and ambitious and frequently caught between competing elements and desires. Alexander is caught between his parents, King Philip and Olympias, both strong-willed, dominating characters whose aims are completely at odds with each other (and who hate and distrust each other). He is also caught between the kind of man his father expects him to become and the kind of man that Aristotle believes he can become - such a man who might be the happy medium between Philip and Aristotle himself.

Aristotle, meanwhile, aside from being caught between the contemporary image of what a man should be (an athletic warrior) and the kind of man that he is (a studious man more interested in discovering the whys of the world around him than in having that world under his own authority and control), is also caught between his fascination with his young pupil and his ambition to run Plato's Academy in Athens. He also has to tow a fine political line and is often intensely aware of the balance he must strike between teaching Alexander and respecting the social hierarchy that defines not only their relationship, but his relationship to Philip as well. From beginning to end, Lyon is able to synthesize a number of different social and class nuances to provide a deep and meaningful portrait of the philosopher and his world.

Throughout The Golden Mean Lyon evokes a distinct and elegant picture of antiquity and expertly crafts the characters and their relationships. Lyon's prose style, which juxtaposes a more modern vernacular against the setting, is highly engaging and reminded me quite a bit of Douglas Glover's great 2003 novel Elle, which employs a similar narrative dynamic. Her prose style in combination with the absolutely captivating story makes The Golden Mean a pleasure to read. Simply put, it's a great book.

The Ambasadors (1903) & The Talented Mr. Ripley (1955)

"I see it now. I haven't done so enough before - and now I'm too old; too old; too old at any rate for what I see. Oh, I do see, at least; and more than you'd believe or I can express. It's too late. And it's as if the train had fairly waited at the station for me without my having had the gumption to know it was there. Now I hear its faint receding whistle miles and miles down the line. What one loses, one loses; make no mistake about that."

Widely regarded to be Henry James' best novel, The Ambassadors is the story of Lambert Strether, a man who has endured a lifetime of emotional starvation, who finally finds nourishment in Paris. He has been sent by his fiancée to retrieve her wayward son and return him to Wollett, Massachusetts so that he can take control of the family business. Arriving in Paris, however, Strether finds that contrary to the fears of his mother and sister, Chad Newsome has been much improved by his time in Europe. He also falls under the spell of Marie de Vionette, the woman to whom credit is due for Chad's newfound sophistication.

Having realized that he's missed out on the best that life has to offer, Strether switches course and begins encouraging Chad to stay in Europe, which in turn would provide him with an excuse to continue his late in life awakening. It also inspires Mrs. Newsome to send a new set of ambassadors, this time in the form of Chad's sister, Sarah, and her husband. Sarah is the antithesis of Strether, sees ugliness in all that he has found beautiful, and her arrival essentially signals the end of Strether's engagement to her mother. In a way Strether has now been made free, however the things he has yet to learn about Europe (and himself) will ultimately make it impossible for him to stay behind and he finds himself forced to return to the United States.

The story of The Ambassadors is relatively small; it's a story of manners, a story without a great deal of plot movement. With James, however, it expands into a whole universe of impressions due to his tendency to pack each and every sentence to capacity. His prose is ornate but never tiresome and the novel contains passages of incredible beauty and finely, exquisitely constructed characters. Though I ultimately prefer The Golden Bowl, James' follow-up novel, The Ambassadors has a lot to recommend it.

"It was a good idea to practice jumping into his own character again, because the time might come when he would need to be in a matter of seconds, and it was strangely easy to forget the exact timbre of Tom Ripley's voice. He conversed with Marge until the sound of his own voice in his ears was exactly the same as he remembered it."

Patricia Highsmith's The Talented Mr. Ripley borrows the germ of its premise from James, sending her protagonist to Europe in order to bring home an errant son. In setting the stage for the plot, Highsmith even tacitly acknowledges the debt, writing, "Mr. Greenleaf was chuckling again, asking him if he had read a certain book by Henry James." It is here, however, that the similarities end, as in all other respects sociopathic Tom Ripley has nothing in common with poor, gentle Lambert Strether. Ripley is all ruthless envy, raging Id, selfish desire.

As The Talented Mr. Ripley opens, Ripley is in New York, feeling the heat from a tax scam that he's sure is about to get busted. When the opportunity arises to sail to Europe on Mr. Greenleaf's dime, he leaps at it and sets off to reacquaint himself with Dickie Greenleaf. He falls in love with Dickie's life (and, perhaps, with Dickie himself) and when it looks as though his access is about to be cut off, he does what to him seems most logical: he murders Dickie and takes over his identity. Unfortunately one murder leads to another and Ripley's double life quickly begins to unravel.

One of the most intriguing aspects of Highsmith's writing is that she's so utterly sympathetic to her villainous character. She wants him to be rewarded for his amorality and since we experience the story from his point of view, experience that sense of the walls closing in at each turn of the plot, we can't help but feel relief when he escapes - though, like Ripley, we know that relief is temporary. Ripley "gets away" with it but he does so knowing that he'll spend the rest of his life looking over his sholder, expecting the other shoe to finally drop. The Talented Mr. Ripley is a masterpiece of tension and Ripley one of the great hero/villains of fiction.

Started Early, Took My Dog (2010)

"When she was murdered his sister was just three years older than his daughter was now. Marlee was fourteen. A dangerous age, although, let's face it, Jackson thought, every age was a dangerous age for a woman."

With Started Early, Took My Dog Kate Atkinson continues the adventures of private investigator Jackson Brodie, first introduced in Case Histories. Here Jackson has been charged with finding the origins of a woman who was adopted as a child, an adoption which it appears was performed illegally. Per usual in the Brodie stories, this is just one of several interlacing threads which will dovetail as the story nears its conclusion. Also per usual, Jackson isn't the "star," exactly; he's the figure who connects this novel to the previous novels but within the context of the novel itself, he's not necessarily any more important than any of the other point-of-view characters.

The novel is divided into three plot threads: one following Jackson, another following Tracy Waterhouse, a former Detective Superintendent now working mall security, and the third following Tilly Squires, an actress losing the battle against dementia. As the story gets started, all three come into possession of things that don't belong to them: Tilly is always wandering off with things that don't belong to her and is later baffled as to why she has them; Jackson takes a dog from an abusive owner; Tracy buys a child from a parent she deems unfit. The three plots weave in and out of each other (and touch on a long dormant murder mystery) until finally coming together in the story's climax. Although the mystery element is well-conceived and executed, Atkinson uses it less as an end of itself and more as a means of exploring the relationship between society and women, including the limitations imposed on women by society and the dangers posed to women by society (the root story of the mystery is set against the backdrop of the days of the Yorkshire Ripper).

Atkinson's novels are never anything less than delightful, though her Brodie novels are not as resonant as her earlier, magic realist works. Her prose style is deeply engaging and she draws us into the lives of her characters in a way that makes it look astonishingly easy. Started Early, Took My Dog is a very enjoyable book, albeit flawed. The Tilly plot, for example, feels uncomfortably shoehorned in and there are a few loose (although ultimately minor) threads left dangling at the end. Nevertheless, it's a great read, the kind of book you'll find you hard to put down.

Dahanu Road (2010)

"It always started with the rubbing of knees. Then Shapur Irani would shut his eyes tight, as he was doing now, as though by sheer willpower he would be able to transport his grandson into the past. Slowly the tightness in Shapur Irani's eyelids increased, until they fluttered like the wings of an injured bird, and he took Zairos with him to an older, more promising time."

With The Cripple and His Talismans, The Song of Kahunsha and now Dahanu Road to his credit, Anosh Irani is swiftly becoming one of the most reliably excellent novelists working in Canada. His latest novel combines elements of the immigrant story, the disenfranchised minority story, the family saga, and the star-crossed love story to form a richly layered and deeply moving tale.

The story centres of Zairos, a young man with no cares save for his father's war on household mosquitoes and his grandfather's lonely life on his grand estate. His grandfather lives behind the veil of his memories, of the time before the death of his beloved wife, a time of pride and happiness after having endured being driven out of Iran. Visiting the estate one day, Zairos finds the body of one of the Warli workers hanging from a tree. The suicide brings Zairos into contact with the man's daughter, Kusum, but it also hints at events of the past, at threads which have long tied Zairos' family to Kusum's despite the seemingly insurmountable class differences between them.

Irani draws stark divisions between his characters, showing the chasm that exists between Zairos and Kusum as existing not only due to custom but also due to Zairos' own psychology. He longs for Kusum but for every step he takes towards her, he takes two steps back. He's brave enough to take Kusum out in public for the local gossip to see, but he's too cowardly to correct his mother when she mistakes Kusum for a new house servant. The relationship between the two is complex and carefully explored, though it is far from the only compelling plot in the novel. Though I don't think Dahanu Road is quite as good as The Song of Kahunsha (though, to be fair, I think Kahunsha is a masterpiece), it's a great novel nevertheless, the kind you find yourself reading slowly so that you can savour each and every development and because you don't want to be done with it.

Freedom (2010)

"'I'm guessing that you've already had the opportunity to be frustrated with people who aren't as bright as you are. People who are not only unable but unwilling to admit certain truths whose logic is self-evident to you. Who don't even seem to care that their logic is bad. Have you never been frustrated that way?'

"'But that's because they're free... Isn't that what freedom is for? The right to think whatever you want? I mean, I admit, it's a pain in the ass sometimes.'"

What is the price of freedom? What horrible compromises must be made in order to make gains in this world? The characters of Jonathan Franzen's latest novel, Freedom, find themselves continuously faced with the necessity of compromise in order to achieve their goals. It's a family drama in which the patriach, the almost tirelessly idealistic Walter Berglund, finds himself working for a giant, earth-destroying (and war profiteering) corporation in order to preserve some small portion of land as a nature sanctuary; the matriarch, Patty, finds herself forced to choose between the sexual satisfaction she might find with Walter's best friend, Richard, and the satisfaction she feels in every other respect with Walter and which she knows she could never find with Richard; their son, Joey, must find a way to reconcile his vision of himself as a freewheeling, self-made playboy with his love for his childhood sweetheart and a rather inconvenient sense of guilt over how he will make his fortune.

Franzen moves back and forth between various perspectives and styles of narration. The novel opens with an overview of the Berglunds from the outside, as they are seen by their neighbors. It then shifts to a much more interrior view through an autobiography written by Patty (to which it will return near the end) and then shifts again, offering chapters from the perspective of Walter, Joey, and Richard. Franzen is ultimately able to paint a very expansive picture of this one particular family, getting deep into their psyches and exposing all the natural cracks that can (and perhaps inevitably will) occur in human relationships.

Freedom has already long since been praised to the heavens as a masterwork, though to be honest its reputation is what made me wait so long to pick it up. After all, how could any book live up to that much hype? But, having now read it, I have to say that it is worthy of all that ppraise. It isn't a flawless book - I felt that the Berglund's daughter, Jessica, was woefully underrepresented - but between Franzen's finely wrought dissection of the minutiae of interpersonal conflicts and his exquisite prose, it's an excellent novel that you won't want to put down.

The Price of Salt (1952)

"It was an evening Therese would never forget, and unlike most such evenings, this one registered as unforgettable while it still lived. It was a matter of the bag of popcorn they shared, the circus, and the kiss Carol gave her back of some booth in the performers' tent. It was a matter of the particular enchantment that came from Carol... and seemed to work on all the world around them, a matter of everything going perfectly, without disappointments or hitches, going just as they wished it to."

Often, works that are described as “groundbreaking” on their initial release lose their edge as the years. They pave the way for other work, work that goes further and, as such, they can end up seeming almost quaint from the distance of a few decades. This is not the case with The Price of Salt, Patricia Highsmith’s novel (written under the pseudonym Claire Morgan) about a relationship between two women. Frank and unapologetic, it remains a compelling read.

It begins with a look, when Therese spots Carol across a department store floor. It’s a new sensation for Therese and she pursues it blindly, stumbling into it without entirely knowing what to expect. Carol, older and married with a child, is more relaxed and more experienced; she’s cooler and more in control of herself and the situation. What begins as a highly charged friendship officially blossoms into more as the two embark on a cross country trip together. By the time they realize that they’re being pursued by a private investigator hired by Carol’s husband, it’s too late; they’re in too deep and the PI has had ample opportunity to gather evidence. Carol finds herself in the position of having to choose between Therese and her daughter and Therese embarks on a painful journey of self discovery.

Highsmith’s style is efficient and to the point, but not without grace. There are passages of great narrative power and the relationship between Therese and Carol is layered and complex. Though there is always an erotic undercurrent to the way Therese and Carol interact, in the beginning there is also an unmistakeable maternal element. Carol treats Therese almost like a child (her own child, perhaps, from whom she is separated) and Therese submissively accepts it, allowing Carol to slip into the role that Therese’s own mother forfeited. Part of Therese’s journey involves shedding her childlike persona and becoming someone who can relate to Carol adult to adult. This transition paves the way for the novel’s happy ending, the first of its kind in stories dealing with queer themes, and makes it all the more resonant. I first read the book about a year ago and it remains just as achingly compelling on the second read, which I find is only rarely the case with books. Simply put, it's a great work that deserves to be rediscovered by readers.

The Loved and the Lost (1951)

"He wanted to go; but to strut out with an air of offended dignity would be to cheapen her. Nothing they could say could destroy his faith in her, and it was like the night when he had been in the Café St. Antoine talking with Elton Wagstaffe and he had known he was called upon to be always with her, even while she was being viciously misunderstood."

Jim McAlpine, the protagonist of Morley Callaghan's Governor General's Award winning The Loved and the Lost, is a man divided against himself. He's a writer who comes from humble beginnings and has high social aspirations, aspirations that might be realized through a relationship with wealthy Catherine Carver, but whose heart and humanity are touched by working class Peggy Sanderson. Rumours abound about Peggy, rumours regarding her relationships with local black musicians, and McAlpine becomes consumed by the need to "save" her before the prejudices of the rest of world destroy her.

Peggy's actions, which are more innocent than she's given credit for, insipre hatred from every corner. White men, whose advances she consistently turns down, resent her and assume that she's having affairs with black men. Black men fear that she's going to draw trouble their way. White and black women alike loathe her. McAlpine is the only one who seems toto see the good in her, though even his affection is ultimately conditional, a discovery which devastates him.

Callaghan unfolds the story in a straight-forward and unfussy way. He confronts issues of race directly, but never allows the story to become preachy. Ultimately, The Loved and the Lost is a memorable novel both for the complex way that it explores its subject and for the sinister undercurrent that runs through the text, just below the surface. There's something rather alarming about the way that McAlpine tries to insinuate himself into Peggy's life. He plots to slip under her radar, to wear down her resistance, to force himself into her life even as she makes it clear that she does not desire her presence. McAlpine clearly sees himself as the (increasingly tragic) hero of the story, but the novel itself is more clear-sighted where he is concerned. It's a fascinating portrayal that practically demands a second reading and The Loved and the Lost is a novel that is definitely worth returning to.

The Talented Miss Highsmith (2010)

"The 'truth' of Pat's life... is misrepresented by the long lines of dates and hours, the crisp lists of appointments and appearances, the solid sense of case histories completed, that make chronological biography such convential reading - and such conventional comfort, too. Except in her aspirations, Pat Highsmith was never a conventional woman - and was never, ever a conventional writer."

If there is one thing that Joan Schenkar's comprehensive biography of Patricia Highsmith isn't, it's "conventional." Schenkar unfolds the facts of Highsmith's life in a non-chronological fashion, organizing the facets of the writer's life into sections and jumping back and forth in time as it suits her (though there is also an appendix which reiterates the information in chronology order). This works not only to bring a tight focus to every aspect of Highsmith's life, it also somewhat unsettles the reader by making it difficult to find your footing, a feeling that puts you perfectly in the mood to read about Highsmith, whose fiction is rooted so deeply in the dark and the sinister.

Schenkar spends a fair bit of time examining Highsmith's complicated romantic entanglements with many women and a few men, but The Talented Miss Highsmith never becomes a gossip book by virtue of the fact that Schenkar is constantly tying Highsmith's love life back to her work. Her relationships - often dramatic and inspiring violent thoughts - did not just feed her work, but were so essential to her ability to work that her writing sometimes suffered for lack of a relationship to help give shape to her life. The picture Schenkar paints is of a woman drawn to nastiness who has more than a little in common with her protagonists, most of whom have murder on their minds. It's a very dark portrait though, at its core, there is also a deep appreciation for the work that made Highsmith famous.

Schenkar does an excellent job at examining how Highsmith's works came into being and, without being overbearing in doing so, makes a solid case that European readers (who embraced Highsmith's work) recognized something that somehow escaped North American readers, who mostly relegated her to the arena of genre writers instead of literary talents. This is not to say that The Talented Miss Highsmith is blindly adoring of its subject - Schenkar maintains objectivity and is frank about the shortcomings of several of Highsmith's works, particularly the later ones - but simply that it belies the notion that so-called suspense writing is somehow a lesser form of fiction. I can't imagine someone finishing this biography without feeling inspired to seek out some of Highsmith's fiction, which is perhaps the highest compliment you can give to a biography of a writer. With its engaging style and fascinating subject, The Talented Miss Highsmith is a book you won't be able to put down and that you'll want to start reading again the moment you finish it.

Unless (2002)

"Probably you will dismiss this as a crank letter from one of those women who go around begging to be offended, but you must understand that I am trying to protect Norah, and her two younger sisters, Christine and Natalie, who want only to be allowed to be fully human."

With her final novel, Unless, Carol Shields does something rather brilliant. She sets the story up as if it will be a typical domestic drama and then, gradually, allows it to become more metatextual as it begins to explore the way that "domestic dramas" are marginalized as "lesser" forms of fiction and how this is merely an extension of other ways in which women's voices/interests/points of view have been shunted to the side throughout history. It is, at times, an angry novel, a story about feeling that you are without a place in the world around you, that you are completely lacking in subjectivity - or, at least, subjectivity that is recognized and acknowledged by those around you.

Unless centres on Reta Winters, a novelist of "light" fiction working on her second book. She is also working on the fourth book of translation for her friend, a noted feminist and writer. She is also struggling to understand why her eldest daughter has dropped out of the family and university in order to sit on a street corner all day, every day with a cardboard sign around her neck which reads "Goodness." Reta's need to understand ultimately drives the novel she's writing and it becomes more and more about female subjectivity and the need to make one's voice heard. During the course of Unless this need is also expressed through letters that Reta writes in response to articles and books she's read which she feels dismiss the female experience, and through Reta's frustrating relationship with her editor who seems incapable of hearing her and is determined to impose his own (male-centric) vision on her novel.

Shields has an easy, engaging prose style that brings the reader deeply into league with Reta. Her struggles, though personal, are also universal and very relatable and Shields is able to explore the novel's larger themes in a way which taps into the anger that comes naturally from the feeling that you're being ignored without ever going over the edge and becoming strident or whiny. The only criticism I have of the novel is that the story seems to wrap up rather quickly and tidily and that's really only a minor qualm. All in all, Unless is a moving and very thought provoking work from a writer who was still very much at the top of her game.

Candide (1759)

"It is impossible that things should be other than they are; for everything is right."

Ever the optimist, Candide goes into the world believing that everything will work out in the end because everything that happens is supposed to happen. His faith will be tested time and again as he and the people around him endure many hardships and eventually he will become disillusioned with his former philosophy - though one wonders if he might have been able to retain some shred of optimism if only his beloved Cunegonde had not been rendered so very ugly.

In telling the story, Voltaire folds in many elements of historical fact, including the Seven Years' War and the 1755 Lisbon earthquake, and moves the plot along at a quick place. Over the course of thirty short chapters Candide is exiled from his home in Westphalia, recruited into military service that nearly kills him, nearly drowns en route to Lisbon where he survives an earthquake, is arrested for heresy and sentenced to be tortured and killed, escapes to Buenos Aires, finds El Dorado and leaves with a fortune (most of which will end up being lost), returns to Europe via England, and finally settles in Turkey. He is also continuously losing people in his life to death only to have those people show up again later, revealing that their injuries were not quite life threatening.

Many terrible things happen in Candide and through them Voltaire casts a critical eye on the governments of Europe, lightly veiling this element behind a sharply rendered parody of a romantic adventure story. The result was that the book was largely denounced at the time of its publication, though it still became an undisputed best seller. Today it is Voltaire's most widely read work and is frequently included in lists of books that make up the Western canon. It's an amusing (and quick) read that remains engaging after some 250 years, an enduring classic that is likely to be read for as long as human beings remain a literate species. Candide may be slight in size, but it's impact has certainly been great.

Wolf: The Lives of Jack London (2010)

"After his death, memory of his politics was conveniently erased and he was refashioned as the quintessential author of boys' adventure stories. He thus became, and remains, perhaps the most misunderstood figure in the American literary canon."

Jack London wore a lot of hats. At various times he was a sailor, a rancher, a tramp, a manual labourer, a proselytizer, and a prospector, amongst other things. His one truly consistent occupation was that of writer, an occupation at which he laboured diligently for most of his life. In Wolf biographer James L. Haley traces how London's disparate experiences informed not only his writing, but also his very ardent socialism. From a young age London was exposed to the harshest realities of life and ever after he would gravitate towards those people most abused by the Capitalist system.

Haley goes to great lengths to show the development of London's political views as well as his eventual disillusionment and resignation from the Socialist party. This aspect of London's life is fascinating, particularly in terms of how he reconciled his beliefs with his own growing wealth, and Haley touches on how London moulded his Socialism to his own circumstances, arguing that the exploitation of the labouring poor is the enemy rather than Capitalism itself.

However, as much depth as Haley gives to London's political beliefs, he does take a rather soft approach to allegations of London's racism. His strategy of simple denial (so simple that it verges on dismissive) is also applied to the possibility that London had sexual experiences with men, and throughout the book he dangles these questions in front of the reader only to quickly deny their plausibility again and again, making some bizarre assertions in the process. Stating, for example:

"That [homosexuality] was practiced in dark corners of the Sophia Sutherland there can be little doubt, but whether London accepted this as a requisite of being a man among men in this womanless environment - his frank exposition of it to Michael Monahan suggests that he may have, but his full-bore heterosexuality in the company of women may suggest otherwise - we don't know."

Becoming an fervent ladies man and serial philanderer may be a sign of uncompromising heterosexuality but it may also be a sign of overcompensation for past same-sex indiscretions. London's sexuality and his feelings regarding race are likely more complicated than a simple "yes" or "no," but Haley's treatment of these questions illuminates very little.

Still, Wolf is a very readable and engaging book that actually focuses on the development of the subject as an artist rather than devolving into a laundry list of the subject's sexual partners, a trap into which a fair number of biographies fall. Wolf is a biography that clearly has a lot of respect for its subject as an artist and, whatever its flaws, I think that Haley does a good job in reminding us why London is essential to the American canon.

The Position (2005)

"Fuck the book, Holly used to say. Yes, that was about right: Fuck the book."

Depending on how you look at it, Meg Wolitzer's The Position is a novel about how a book destroyed the members of a family, or it's about how a book provided the framework for the destruction that would have happened regardless. It centers on the Mellows, Roz and Paul, the parents who write the how-to book "Pleasuring: One Couple's Journey to Fulfillment," and their four children: Holly, Michael, Dashiell, and Claudia, all of whom are deeply affected by the book's existence.

The novel begins with the childrens' discovery of the book - Holly and Michael are adolescents, Dashiell and Claudia still very young - and with the family in tact and happy, but most of the novel takes places three decades later, when publishers want to reissue the book to celebrate its 30th anniversary. Roz and Paul are by now divorced and the children are grown with lives and problems of their own. Holly has become a spectre, a figure only nominally connected to the rest of the family and determined to keep it that way; Michael is a workaholic whose anti-depressants have made him unable to function sexually; Dashiell is a Log Cabin Republican; and Claudia is aimless, struggling to find her place in the world.

Wolitzer moves back and forth between the characters, relating the story from their various perspectives. The children are all shown to have been profoundly impacted by the fact of the book, though the issues really have more to do with the implosion of their parents' marriage soon after the book's publication and the knowledge that intense sexual intimacy is not, necessarily, a guarantee of relationship longevity (the only exception seems to be Dashiell, whose issue is with the book, specifically with the fact that there's nothing in it that he can connect to his own experiences and desires). The Position is a sexually frank, if not necessarily erotic, novel with a few brief flashes of brilliance. All things told it's a bit uneven, but it's ultimately worth a read.

The Poisonwood Bible (1998)

"I feared him more than it's possible to fear a mere man. Feared Him, loved Him, clamped my hands over my ears to stop His words that rang in my head even when He was far away, or sleeping. In the depths of my sleepless nights I would turn to the Bible for comfort, only to find myself regaled yet again. Unto the woman God said: I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception, in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee."

Barbara Kingsolver's The Poisonwood Bible is a wide-reaching novel. It's about white Western privilege and white Western guilt, the meddling of the first world in the third, the tyranny of religious fanatacism and of misogyny. It centers on Orleanna Price and her four daughters - Rachel, Leah, Adah, and Ruth May - and their hard life under the thumb of the family's patriach, Nathan, a Baptist missionary. At Nathan's behest the family moves to a village in the Congo, where they come undone under Nathan's harsh rule - made all the more intense by his inability to impose his beliefs on the Congolese people - the clash of cultures, political upheaval, and eventually a death. In the end, the family ends up scattered, some remaining in Africa, others returning to the United States, but always connected by their experiences in the Congo.

At the heart of the novel is the theme of one entity attempting to impose its will on another. First the Belgians and then the Americans impose their will on the Congo, attempting to tailor it to their own interests and turning it into a war zone of conflicting desires and stark brutality. Nathan attempts to force Christianity on the Congolese and eventually goes mad (if he could ever have been said to be truly sane) at his inability to make them accept the teachings of the Bible. For a time Nathan succeeds in ruling over the women in his life but, one by one, they turn away from him, their fear of him becoming outright hate. Kingsolver sets up Leah as a mirror to her father, beginning the novel as his most ardent disciple and ending it as his exact opposite. She comes to embrace the native way of life, to despise the foreign intervention which has massacred the African continent, and to have four sons, each of whom possesses qualities that remind her of herself and her sisters. Through her, as part of the true legacy that Nathan has left, he will be redeemed, though he hardly deserves it.

Kingsolver tells the story from the perspective of the wife and daughters, the wife relating her story far removed from the events, the daughters as the events are happening. The narrative voices of the daughters shift as they age and grow as people and as their perspectives change, so does the novel's view of the Congo and its people, becoming more nuanced, less simplistic. Kingsolver's prose style is strong and assured and incredibly effective and the novel itself is rich and poignant. The Poisonwood Bible is a wonderful book, beautifully rendered.

Les Misérables (1862)

"Certainly they appeared utterly depraved, corrupt, vile and odious; but it is rare for those who have sunk so low not to be degraded in the process, and there comes a point, moreover, where the unfortunate and the infamous are grouped together, merged in a single, fateful word. They are les misérables - the outcasts, the underdogs."

Victor Hugo's Les Misérables is at once an intimate story centering on a small cast of characters and more than a few coincidences, and a sprawling epic that takes as its subject the whole of France and the complexities of revolution. It focuses primarily on Jean Valjean, a convict turned hero several times over who spends the novel changing identities and eluding capture by the relentless Inspector Javert. The story also involves Cosette, the girl Valjean raises as a daughter, and Marius, a young idealist with whom Cosette falls in love. Long before they meet Cosette and Marius have a connection, though neither knows it: a man named Thénardier is believed to have rescued Marius' father after the Battle of Waterloo - a debt the elder Pontmercy is never able to repay and thus bequeaths to his son - and is the same man who abused young Cosette before she was rescued by Valjean. Like Valjean, Thénardier and his family change their identities whenever the walls are closing in, but unlike Valjean they live lives of disrepute, stealing and taking advantage of others. In the streets of Paris and beyond, these characters weave in and out of each others lives.

The story unfolds over a seventeen year period and against the backdrop of the events leading up to the June Revolution of 1832, in which both Marius and Valjean participate (though for very different reasons). The story is staggeringly ambitious and Hugo is meticulous when it comes to the details, no matter how small. This is somewhat problematic in that the minor tangents Hugo follows slows the flow of the story and presents unwanted distractions from the main thrust of the narrative. The characters are so well drawn and their struggles are so compelling that to be brought so deep into their experiences only to suddenly be confronted with, say, several chapters devoted to the history of the Paris sewers, is really disruptive. It isn't a big enough flaw to detract from the ultimate greatness of the novel, but it's a flaw nevertheless.

What really works in favour of Les Misérables is how thoroughly Hugo brings his characters to life. Valjean, in particular, and the moral struggles that he endures as he tries to live a good life and atone for past sins, is a character so totally fleshed out that he may very well walk off the page and into reality. Here, the details serve Hugo well, because without characters the reader comes to care about so much, the story would simply be a collection of historical facts strung together. It's much more than that, however, which is why the story is still so widely celebrated and continues to live on through countless adaptations on stage and screen. This is the kind of novel the word "classic" was made for.

Far From The Madding Crowd (1874)

"It appears that ordinary men take wives because possession is not possible without marriage, and that ordinary women accept husbands because marriage is not possible without possession; with totally differing aims the method is the same on both sides."

Far from the Madding Crowd was Thomas Hardy's fourth novel and is a story of country life, romance and tragedy. It centers on Gabriel Oak and Bathsheba Everdene, the former a steadfast suitor who, even after losing what little opportunity he may have had at making Bathsheba his wife, remains loyal to her. The latter is a fiercely independent woman determined never to be under the thumb of a man - husband or otherwise - and who has the misfortune of falling in love with Francis Troy, a handsome rogue whose lack of character she discovers much too late. The story also includes a third man - the farmer William Boldwood - whose indifference to Bathsheba is transformed to love after she plays a reckless joke on him and whose obsession with her sets up the novel's climax.

Hardy is a terrific writer of characters, particularly female characters. Bathsheba is spirited and complex and through her romantic entanglements Hardy explores the delicate balance that must be reached in order to achieve a successful union. Troy sparks her passion but his ultimate lack of consideration for her could lead to her ruin; Boldwood is a solid man who could provide her a comfortable life but because she feels nothing for him, a marriage to him would be emotionally unfulfilling. Oak is (perhaps) the midway point between the two extremes, but for much of their acquaintance she simply cannot bring herself to consider him. In the hands of a lesser storyteller all of this might be mere soap opera, but Hardy makes it incredibly compelling. The only real problem with the novel is that Oak is a little too saintly, lacking in the weaknesses that plague many of Hardy's other characters, and so he seems less human.

Tragedy and Hardy seem to go hand in hand, but Far from the Madding Crowd is different from his other novels like Jude the Obscure or Tess of the D'Urbervilles in that it has a (somewhat) happy ending. There is a great deal of darkness in the story but it is not an unrelentingly grim tale and Hardy's prose, as always, is beautiful and the narrative flows easily, drawing the reader not only into the lives and minds of its main characters, but also into the community that surrounds them. It's a terrific novel from one of the masters of English literature.

I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings (1969)

"If growing up is painful for the Southern Black girl, being aware of her displacement is the rust on the razor that threatens the throat. It is an unnecessary insult."

I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings, the first volume of Maya Angelou's six-part autobiography, charts the writer's life from childhood to parenthood. The book explores many very big themes, including racism and sexuality, as Angelou begins to develop a sense of identity, finding at several points that her conception of herself is at odds with the way that others see her and often dependent on where she is and with whom (through the course of the story she lives in Arkansas with her grandmother, St. Louis and later San Fransisco with her mother, and spends a brief period in southern California with her father).

At the age of eight she is raped by her mother's boyfriend, an event which shades the rest of the story. Aside from the obvious physical trauma, the violation also has continuing psychological effects which hinder her ability to relate to the world around her. After her rapist is murdered, Angelou is convinced that his death is a result of a lie she told during his trial (that the rape was the first sexual contact she'd had with him), that her words have the power to kill, and takes a vow of silence which lasts for several years. Importantly, her muteness is broken in part by her engagement with literature, by the encouragement she receives to read aloud. Literature specifically, and Angelou's love of learning generally, play a large role throughout the story as her identity shifts and is shaped as she grows from a girl to a woman.

Angelou writes with intense frankness and the images she creates are vivid. Her style is very engaging and though there is much pain throughout the story, there are also moments of humor and it ends on such a hopeful note that it cannot be considered a work of despair.

As a slight aside, it's interesting to read this book so soon after having read Jamie Ford's Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet, as part of Angelou's story deals with the World War II period in San Fransisco, including touching briefly on the Japanese internment. It makes for an interesting contrast of impressions of a city (and country) in the midst of sweeping changes.

Tales of the Jazz Age (1922)

"The Montana sunset lay between two mountains like a gigantic bruise from which dark arteries spread themselves over a poisoned sky. An immense distance under the sky crouched the village of Fish, minute, dismal, and forgotten." (from the story "The Diamond As Big As the Ritz")

Tales of the Jazz Age was F. Scott Fitzgerald's second collection of short stories, published in the same year as his sophomore novel The Beautiful and the Damned and three years before his masterpiece The Great Gatsby. The collection is divided into three parts: My Last Flappers, Fantasies, and Unclassified Masterpieces. The stories are, for the most part, comedic in tone but several take on distinctly dark overtones, such as the stories May Day, The Diamond as Big as the Ritz, and The Lees of Happiness. That final story, which centers on a young wife whose life comes to revolve around her ailing husband, feels particularly poignant given what would become of Fitzgerald's wife, Zelda, though of course the story predates Zelda's troubles by several years. It is the saddest and arguably most compelling of all the stories, a heartbreaking tale of devotion, friendship, and loss.

The best of the stories are The Diamond as Big as the Ritz, a darkly comedic thriller which centers on a young man who finds himself in the unenviable position of having to escape the compound of a man whose property rests atop a mountain made of diamond and who never lets guests leave alive lest they reveal his treasure to the world; The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, a vastly different tale in Fitzgerald's telling than as told by the film of the same name; The Lees of Happiness; and The Camel's Back, a ridiculous story about a man who gets dumped, gets drunk, goes to a costume party as a camel (paying a cabbie to be the other half of the costume), and accidentally marries his ex-girlfriend in what is supposed to be a mock ceremony between "the camel" and "the Egyptian snake charmer." This story is a lot funnier than it has any right to be and gets funnier with each development of the plot.

Not all of the stories are successful. May Day, which involves several characters and plot threads which cross over the course of a day (or so), is a bit unfocused, while Porcelain and Pink, Tarquin of Cheapside and Mr. Icky are all a bit thin, though not without their moments of beauty. Fortunately, even when the stories themselves are somewhat lacking in the plot, Fitzgerald's prose makes them worth the read. The elegant precision of his writing is always a treat and though few of the stories take on the grandeur of his more celebrated novels, they are beautifully written and terrifically engaging pieces of work.

Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet (2009)

"Henry looked at the paper in Keiko's hand. The bold type screamed INSTRUCTIONS TO ALL PERSONS OF JAPANESE ANCESTRY. It was all about Japanese families being forced to evacuate... Keiko touched her heart with her finger and pointed to Henry. He touched his and felt the button his family wore. "I am Chinese."

Jamie Ford's Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet centers on Henry and the love affair that begins in 1942, when he's twelve. The object of his affections is Keiko, a girl of Japanese descent with whom he forms a quick and intense bond as the only two students of color at an all-white school. At school their friendship is inevitable, as they are isolated and bullied by the rest of their peers; however, at home, the friendship is forbidden by Henry's father, a Chinese immigrant with a deep hatred for the Japanese. When Keiko and her family are taken away to an internment camp, Henry moves heaven and earth in order to remain in contact with her but, inevitably, they loose touch. A lifetime later, now a widower with a grown son, Henry learns that the possessions belonging to several Japanese families from the war years have been unearthed in the long closed Panama Hotel. On a hunch, he investigates further, looking for something that will reignite that long severed connection.

On the face of it, Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet is a love story, but more than that it's a story very much concerned with issues of identity. Henry is American by birth and encouraged by his parents to be a "real" American (they go so far as to forbid him from speaking Cantonese at home so that he'll be forced to "learn his American"), even as they force him to wear a button that reads, "I Am Chinese". To his white classmates he's a foreigner and indistinguishable from the Japanese, to the other Chinese kids in his neighborhood he's a "white devil" because he goes to the white school. The only people to whom he relates in any meaningful way are Keiko and Sheldon, a black jazz musician and friend. His sense of self is in constant flux and he spends his entire life trying to balance the cultural expectations of his parents with his own desires. He cannot be his father's son and love a Japanese girl, but he cannot be whole while denying the part of himself that does love a Japanese girl. The push-pull within Henry is never really resolved (it wouldn't be realistic if it was), but it remains compelling throughout.

Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet isn't a flawless novel - the plot developments aren't always quite as graceful or subtle as they might be - but it's a novel that is very emotionally resonant. Ford's strength lies in the way he develops and explores the characters. Henry, Keiko, and those who surround them, are well-drawn and their relationships complex, giving the story a weight worthy of its subject matter.

The Lost Books of the Odyssey (2010)

“They were gone for a very long time. When they returned, Troy had been abandoned, its moss-stained walls as worn as mountain-sides, the rusting hulks of war machines decaying on its parapets amid the tatterdemalion shells of factories. The levels of the Greek palace had multiplied, gone deeper – now it resembled a vast inverted castle, its battlements and towers soaring into the depths of the earth.” (from the chapter “Agamemnon and the Word”)

In his ingenious and exquisitely written debut novel The Lost Books of the Odyssey, Zachery Mason takes the characters and legends well-known from Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey and looks at them from a variety of different perspectives. The premise of the novel involves the discovery of a series of fragments, each presenting an alternate account of the characters and stories connected to Odysseus. Here we have multiple versions of Odysseus’ homecoming, of his adventures and the figures he encountered, even a variety of characterizations of Odysseus himself. In some stories he is the Odysseus that we have always known, cunning and brave and blessed by Athena; in others he is cowardly and will do anything to avoid fighting. In one story (told from the perspective of Polyphemus) he is a pirate who maliciously mutilates an inhospitable hermit. These portrayals play on aspects of Odysseus’ personality that have always been present and taken together they give us a full and very complex picture of one of mythology’s most celebrated heroes.

Odysseus is not the centre of every fragment and in some he does not figure directly. One story, for example, recounts the myth of Theseus and ends with an abandoned and betrayed Ariadne transforming into Calypso. Another explains the Iliad and Odyssey as elaborate chess manuals, and one reimagines the odyssey as belonging to Alexander the Great, who longs to emulate Achilles but finds that he has more in common with Odysseus.

Each story is beautifully written, full of striking imagery and wit. The stories are told in very precise fashion but are self-contained so that the novel can be opened to any chapter and enjoyed. Prior to the novel’s publication it would have been easy to argue that there was absolutely no need for more Odyssey inspired stories, but The Lost Books of the Odyssey is a terrific addition to the mythological canon.