the Soul of an Octopus - Nat'l Book Award Finalist Non-fiction by Sy Montgomery

Sy Montgomery (b Germany 1958) is a both a naturalist & writer of fiction & non-fiction for adults & children.  Her writing & life's work have garnered many literary honors; a Nat'l Book Award nomination for "the Soul of an Octopus" and awards for advocating the protection of animals.  Sy's background is in journalism and psychology.  She's not a marine biologist, zoologist or scientist.  Needless, Sy possesses a profound curiosity and awe of aquatic and animal creatures.  Her talent for writing reflects her own journey, observations and responses that connect with the reader in a compelling and straightforward style.  Sy is synonymous with Ariel (in reverse) "Ready to know...ask em my questions and get some answers.  Would I love to explore...Wish I could be part of that world." (Ashman/Menken).  Sy's enthusiasm to learn and explore are infectious & expansive.  Why did she choose to learn about octopuses and their worlds?  We discover alongside Sy about "... an animal with venom like a snake, a beak like a parrot and ink like an old fashioned pen.  It can weigh as much as a man and stretch as long as a car.  Yet it can pour its baggy; boneless body through an opening the size of an orange.  It can change color and shape.  It can taste with its skin.  Most fascinating of all... octopuses are smart."  This is a thrilling odyssey of discovery stemming from Sy's co-existing intimately with several different octopuses contained within a well cared for public aquarium and delving into their natural habitats.  Sy wisely shares the inputs & reactions she garners from trained staff, volunteers and visitors to the aquarium which adds layers of wonder and appreciation for these fascinating creatures.   We learn about scuba diving as Sy begins her training as a novice and advances to exotic underwater locations to observe octopuses and aquatic life.  Sy notes "To share such moments of deep tranquility with another being, especially one as different from us...is a humbling privilege."  "The Soul of an Octopus" is an immensely rewarding read.  The reader discovers that animals and not just mammals and birds are capable of learning, recognizing individuals and responding to kindness.  This beautiful book teaches us about the lives of octopuses and fathoms curiosity, compassion and empathy.

Australian Author Gerald Murnan's Novel "Border Districts" Is a Bore

The NYT featured an article on Gerald Murnan (b Australia 1939) in May of 2018 in which they named him "the greatest English language writer most people have never heard of."  "Border Districts" is the first work I've read by this highly honored writer.  Murnan's received the Prime Minister Literary Award in 2018 for fiction and the Victorian Premier's Literary Award for non-fiction  in 2016.  "Border District" is a novella in which an octogenarian is looking back on his life in an attempt to glean what memories he retains.  The premise is not without its charms.  The fault lies in the drudgery of culling what warrant reminiscing.  Murnan's unamed protagonist is a pompous bore.  He reflects most back on life mainly through the books he so avidly he read as a precocious youngster and later as a pompous adult.  The novel shifts from 1st person to narrator that alienate the reader.  The man recalls without modesty his literary honors & academic achievements.  Other topics worthy of his note include horse racing, priests and the refraction of light particularly off stained glass.  Facts relating to his immediate family are glossed over.  The idea of connecting memory to music, colors and reading material was clever but failed to connect to interesting details from his past.  The one correspondent who failed to  answer his letter he described as "a tiresome eccentric,"  which describe the writer himself.  Furthermore, the author recounts a book he reads as "tedious and self-serving."  It's been suggested that "Border District" is Murnan's final foray into fiction.  The writer mentions in relation to yet another book he read he "had hoped that the book might reveal something of what I might have called the inner life of the author."  Should Gerald Murnan intended this novella as a guise for revealing himself then his ruse is neither amusing or enlightening.  I think there are reasons "most people have never head of" him.  His writing is flat, tedious and self-serving.  The harshest criticism I have for "Border Districts" from what I recalled is it's dull.

Julie Orringer's THE FLIGHT PORTFOLIO" WWII Historic Biopic Fiction that Fails

"The Flight Portfolio" is historic fiction based on American journalist Varian Fry who clandestinely worked to help many prominent Jews flee from German occupied France.  Julie Orringer award winning author of "The Invisible Bridge" selected a historic figure whose saved thousands of Jews escape the Nazi in the 1940s.  In doing so, Fry has been named by Israel as the Righteous Among the Nations; an honorary title bestowed non-Jews who risked their lives to save Jews during the Holocaust.  Fry is a name that's mainly lost to history along with the names of numerous prominent Jewish artists, writers and scientists.  Fry's courageous operations to save those who were regarded as "irreplaceable treasure" must be measured to "matter more than others, those men and women; they had to be brighter manifestations of light."  Not to diminish Fry's heroism but not to consider the onerous task of placing a higher value on one life over another. "Fry's list" is comprised of numerous names that are poorly regaled through history:  Breitscheid, Hilferding, Breton, Feuchtwanger and Zilberman.  Other artists on Fry's list more familiar would be Max Ernst, Mac Chagall and Jacques Lipchitz.  Fry's mission, which saved lives speaks for the millions who weren't given top priority to protect because they didn't register as part of the "European cultural pantheon." Still, Orringer may have written a stirring novel about the desperate measures and harrowing escapes but the novel remains a tepid tale of covert operations to transport Jews to safety.  The element in Orringer's story that arose vigor was the fictitious homosexual love affair between Fry and Grant.  Grant was Fry's lover while students at Harvard and their paths cross 12 years later when Grant contacts Fry in France to help his lover cross safely into Spain.  Fry describes their tryst at a time when all efforts should have been directed to saving lives as "another reality, one without war or rules or wives; they had gotten there by some alchemical magic."  Unfortunately, the Nazis were invading foreign countries and exterminating millions and the concealed passion does further collateral damage to noteworthy historic individuals and events.  "The Flight Portfolio" uncovers consequential events and distinguished artists imperiled during WWII.  Regrettably, this ambitious work shares the same soaring flight as Icarus and suffers the same disastrous fate.

Dark at the Crossing Nat'l Book Award Nominee - Continuous Conflicts in the Middle East

Elliot Ackerman's "Dark at the Crossing" is nominated for the 2018 Nat'l Book Award for fiction.  The novel is a conflux of confusion covering the civil wars within Iraq and Syria and warfare aimed at removing the Assad regime in Syrian and destroying Daesh, a.k.a. ISIS fighters.   Haris is an Iraqi/American who served as an interpreter for the US Army in Iraq.  He received his American citizenship for his service.  With the money he earned as an interpreter and his US citizenship, he brings his younger sister back to the states.  Haris left the war torn are but never left the war behind him.  Once he has his sister is settled Haris finds himself untethered.  He leaves the US to enter into Syria through Turkey willing to sacrifice himself for a free Syria, a cause he knew to be right.  But his clarity for returning to fight becomes muddled, partly from quilt fighting alongside the American in a cause he felt was wrong.  While detained in Turkey and planning to enter Syria as a soldier against Assad, Haris questions if he believed in war not as a cause but as a purpose or even as an impulse "the way a painter paints, or a musician plays, a necessary impulse."  Haris was recruited online as a fighter for the Free Army's Revolution.  He was deceived and robbed of his money, passport and possessions while attempting to cross.  He's left stranded in Turkey but is befriended by Amir and his wife Daphne.  The estranged couple escaped from Aleppo but without their beloved daughter.  Daphne believes fervently her daughter has survived and is determined to return and search for her.  Amir agrees to help them in their seemingly futile or suicidal mission.   The curious love triangle only convolutes this already hazy novel.  The young vagrant refugees cast aside and the severely wounded in the ill-equipped hospital paint a clearer picture of the collateral fall-outs of warfare.  The potency of Ackerman's novel is its anti-war messaging.  Amir, the pragmatist contends  "The Free Army's Revolution, Daesh's jihad, their causes had muddled, leading nowhere."  War sparked by idealism, martyrdom or radicalism exacts its toll of never-ending cycles of revenge, destruction and death.  I don't recommend the dismal & perplexing novel "Dark at the Crossing."

Dame Penelope Lively's "How it all Began" Narcissistic Fatalistic Conventions

Dame Penelope Lively (b 1933) has received the Booker Prize (Moon Tiger), 2 other Booker Prize nominations along with being name and Officer of the British Empire.  I was ready to pan "How it all Began" as rubbish as being a melodramatic soap opera that delves into the lives of the British working class, its snobbish, aristocratic & arcane academia and adulterous affairs that can be so tedious.  Needless to say, there is much more substance beneath the facade of British propriety, social standing and debate over fate taking precedence.  The novel starts with a mugging of 70 something Charlotte.  Charlotte needs hip surgery and against her will must succumb to moving in with her daughter Rose & her dull husband.  The other characters are connected & affected by this arbitrary act of barbarity.  Rose is an admin. assistant to Prof. Henry Peters (a pompous Henry Higgins figure).  The Prof. is an interminable bore and narcissist working on his endless memoirs for which nobody cares.   Charlotte now waylaid from her home & routine which included literacy tutoring to adults is assigned Anon, a recent Central European immigrant to come to Rose's home.  The mugging causes Rose to miss work with Henry whose dependent on someone when traveling to lecture.  Marion, Henry's niece is called in to help though she has little tolerance for him.  Marion would rather be anywhere else, especially working on her decorating business or with her illicit lover Jeremy.  Jeremy  is consummately in love with himself.  While Charlotte is tutoring Anon to read English so he can seek better employment, Rose and Anon develop a relationship that blossoms into romance.  Lively's construct shows the happenstance ripple in people's orbits spinning out towards new trajectories.  Her cleverness lies not in the stars or the fates but in characters we love to hate.  "How it All Began" seemed a little stuffy & predictable to start, but therein lies more to ponder from Penelope when considering one's choice in their own destiny.  Lively is a bibliophile who could turn anyone into a reader in one genre or another.

"There, There" Short-Listed for Pulitzer Prize '19 Fiction - Native Amer. Lives Now Now

Tommy Orange's debut novel is a rare work of literary genius that garners critical acclaim & major writing awards and puts the reader to shame for ignoring the impoverished cycle of Native Americans that have continuously been brutalized, oppressed and left to fend for themselves.  Orange's prologue is a piercing essay dating back to 1621 outlining the genocides and barbarity thrust upon Native Americans by the encroaching white populations who stopped at nothing to eliminate an unwanted indigenous population who inhabited very much wanted land.  Orange's blazing debut novel is set in contemporary Oakland, CA where "Getting us to cities was supposed to be the final, necessary step in our assimilation, absorption, erasure, the completion of a 500 year old genocidal campaign."  The novel's title is appropriated from Gertrude Stein's poem referencing the return to her hometown of Oakland "There is no there, there."  The novel coalesces the lives of a dozen Native Americans living in Oakland which intersect and combust in a Native Pow-wow at the local coliseum.  An armed robbery planned & perpetrated by dissociated youths of Native American ancestry to steel the prize money awarded turns into a deadly melee.  The heart-wrenching irony is compounded knowing the opportunities to break the cycle of poverty, substance abuse and inertia at the root of the distressing problems fires back, blaming its own community of Native Americans.  Lonny is a child of fetal, alcohol syndrome fully aware of his distorted face & learning disabilities.  Jacqui Red Feather is raising her sister's grandsons while she struggles with her own sobriety working as a substance abuse counselor.  And, Calvin is a youth at odds with his disconnection from his ancestral history and mired in inertia sorting how to manage in today's society are several of the novel's glaring characters weaved within a novel of startling grace and utter dismay.  Jacquie Red Feather explains "its that you get stuck, and then the more stuck you get, the more stuck you get."  Dene, also a Native Amer.  from Oakland receives a grant to capture stories of tribal members.  Dene realizes for "Native people in this country, all over the Americas, it's been developed over, buried ancestral land, glass and concrete and wire and steel, un-returnable memory.  There is no there there."  Orange's glorious novel is potent  yet cognizant of the futility for redemption.  "Remembering itself is becoming old fashioned."

Lauren Groff's THE MONSTERS of TEMPLETON Stumbles in Complicated Storytelling

Lauren Groff's novel "The Monsters of Templeton" was shortlisted for the Orange Prize and named as one of the best books of the year by Amazon in 2008.  Groff's writing style is mythical and poetic. Her story is a compilation of contemporary drama, historical fiction and fantasy.  Wilhemina "Willi" Upton is a Stanford grad student in anthropology.  She's selected by her professor to take part in a dig in Alaska.  Alas, she & her prof. do most of their research under the sheets until his jealous wife arrives and slaps Willi silly.  Enraged Willi seeks revenge against her rival by attempting to mow her down with the small plane the bitch just flew in on.  Facing possible criminal charges and expulsion Willi retreats back to her hometown, Cooperstown home to the Baseball Hall of Fame in defeat.  An only child, Willi leans on her mom, Vi, to mend her wounds while pining for her professor.  To complicate matters, Willi believes herself pregnant, unsure what to do with her "lump" and her life.  What she does to get her mind off her own woes is to research the history of her hometown, now overrun by tourists, and solve the mystery of who her father is.  Miraculously, Willi's return home coincides with the discovery of a 50' corpse of a monster in Lake Glimmerglass.  The Lake borders Willi's home and it's not long before the media circus arrives.  Groff's novel is bookended by this magical creature that's inhabited the lake for eons.  The day the monster surfaced Willi senses her mother's hatred of her for returning in disgrace, lopping off mom's own ambitions, yet again and portending everything disintegrating to ashes.  To keep herself distracted, Willi's research of her family tree, the town's history and thus the quest to uncover her father (rather than just asking her mother) takes the reader through a labyrinth of local lore & history unveiling insidious characters and unscrupulous dealings. The true monsters of the town arise from the Templeton family members and their dastardly deeds.  Meantime Willi contends with locals from her past & her mother's love life. The story undulates between Willi's forlorn situation, unforeseen future and the town's convoluted history.  Groff's writing is complicated and oftentimes confusing.  But there are astute observations that resonate so vividly they vibrate like flicked crystal.  Groff concedes herself a rococo storyteller; inherently confusing.   Hazel, the town's librarian & historian discredits Willi's findings. "The story's all fabrication, in a way wish fulfillment." An optimistic ending coincides with the discovery of a young sea monster in Lake Glimmerglass that parallels new beginnings & opportunities.  "The more frightening the future is, the more complicated it seems to be the more we steady ourselves with the past."  Brilliantly written, complex yet oftentimes overwrought, THE MONSTERS of TEMPLETON will tow the reader down through multitudinous layers of reef.