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 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 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.

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.

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.