Richard Russo's Novel CHANCES ARE - Not Good for a Good Read

Richard Russo is nobody's fool when it comes to writing clever novels.  I'll give it to you straight,  "Chances Are" is a major fall from his previous imperial works.  The novel is about 4 friends whose friendship was forged as freshmen in college during the turbulent Viet Nam years.  Lincoln, Teddy, Mickey, the 3 male musketeers all vie for despite maintaining a motto of all for one.  And, one female Jacy for whom the 3 buddies vie for and would die for.  The individual back stories these four insipid guys are a complete bore.  Jacy's backstory is full incredulous melodrama.  Mickey's number comes up top in the draft.  Can you sing revelie or Oh Canada?   Jacy's determined to steer Mickey to dodge the draft.  The 3 buddies & gal pal plan a last hoorah after graduating at Lincoln's family home in Nantucket before they spread apart in different directions.  The novel is broken up into the 3 Musketeers which all revolve around their love for Jacy.  On the last day of their weekend swan song Jacy departs early leaving a note; never to be seen again nor forgotten.  Therein lies a mystery of what happened to their beloved Jacy.  Could there have been foul play?  The real mystery is how such witty writer could write such a shallow & facetious novel.  The characters are insipid and unappealing.  The payoff of what happened to the damsel that dazzled everyone in college is off-putting and trite.  Russo attempts to be profoundly philosophical about fate comes too late and only irritates.   "What made the contest between fate and free will so lopsided was that human beings invariably mistook one for the other, hurling themselves furiously against that which is fixed and immutable while ignoring the very things over which they actually had some control."  The time  wasted reading "Chances Are" makes me want to hurl.

Nathan Englander's Dinner at the Center of the Earth - Implausible Paths for Peace

"Dinner at the Center of the Earth" is Nathan Englander's brilliant new novel centers around the conflicts between Israelis and Palestinians.  Englander's clever and calculating novel, in addition to being a political & historic novel is also a love story between Shira, an Israeli spy and a Palestinian spy.  There's also prisoner Z whose hapless imprisonment serves as ground zero from which other narratives arise.  Z's duplicity endangering Israel is captured by Shira who had captured his heart. Z's held without charges or communication to the outside world.  His confinement is a punitive purgatory.  His only contact is with his unnamed guard whose mother Ruthie secured him this top secret job.  Ruthie was the right hand assistant to the General known for his ruthless retribution for any attacks on Israelis.  The General has been in a decades long coma caused during a destruction mission that killed a mother and her children in their home.   The General's voice while in limbo chronicles his life and his crucial role in orchestrating battles against Palestine.  Each story and their interconnections are riveting.  The apex of this heart rendering novel is Shira's hopeless love story which echoes an essential need to compromise, meet in the middle and come to the table to negotiate peace.  The ephemeral hope for an end to bloodshed seems possible when people come face to face.  Unfortunately, the cyclical, never ending killings is imbedded in an inherent system of killing in mankind and man's firm conviction of retaliation that thrives eternally.  Englander, a Pulitzer Prize nominated writer eloquently eulogizes our fate.  " Once the invasion begins - There's no knowing how and when, or even if the bloodshed will ever end.  Only that both sides will battle for justice, killing each other in the name of those freshly killed, honoring the men who died avenging those, who by then, died avenging."  This astonishing novel, as with Englander's other works conveys  mistrust, hatred and violence.  "Dinner at the Center...." implores the the most violent and steady escalation of war but it also poses the implausible but possible hope for a resolve to end enmity.

Tea Obhret's INLAND The America Western Frontier

Tea Obhret's stunning debut novel "The Tigers Wife" was a Nat'l Book  Finalist and receive the Orange Prize.  This lyrical & mystical novel was set in an unnamed Balkan country.  Obhret's 2nd novel INLAND is an American Western Frontier 19th C saga.  The story originates in an unnamed Serbian nation. Our first raconteur is Djuric (Americanized to Lurie).  He travels across the Atlantic with his father at a young age with little memory of the crossing but for the dead laid out in shrouds along the stern.  When Lurie father dies shortly after arriving, Lurie recalls his father's corpse being loaded into the Coachman's wagon for burial.  After his death "my father never came to me again, not in the waters, not even in dreams."  Lurie augurs the cohabitation between the living and the dead.  The next time Lurie meets the Coachman he goes to work with him robbing graves.  Lurie found work robbing graves.  He recalls the ghost of a corpse "I knew he'd put his ghost arm about my shoulders.  That was the first I ever got this strange feeling at the edges of myself."  Lurie falls in with a gang of robbers.  Fleeing the Marshall leads Lurie to the Wild West.  The narration picks up with Nora, a pioneer in unsettled AZ with her husband to raise their family.  Nora's first born, Evelyn dies in infancy but maintains an omnipresent conversant with her mother.  Nora finds normalcy & comfort  in their ongoing dialogues.  Josie comes to live with the family.  She professes to sense apparitions around their homestead.  Nora debunks this as utter nonsense despite accepting her daughter's ubiquitous spirit.  The novel reads similarly to Sebastian Barry's "Days without End".   Obhret paints a mosaic of the beauty of an unspoiled, unsettled and lawless west with its harsh struggles & violent ways of life.  Obhret is a remarkable & commanding writer.  She writes of those who believe in the power of communion with the dead and other living unmoored souls.  INLAND speaks mournfully of duplicity, loneliness and regret.  Nora recognizes falsehood as the preservative that enables the world to maintain itself.  Everyone keeps some part of themselves hidden away,  even from their loved ones.

Turkish/British Author Elif Shafak's 10 Minutes and 38 Seconds

Novelist Elif Shafak is a British/Turkish novelist whose latest novel "10 Minutes and 38 Seconds in this Strange World" received a 2019 Booker nomination and put Shafak under investigation by Turkish authorities.  The novel is set in and around Istanbul.  Shafak doesn't paint a flattering picture of the cruelties in Turkish society and the extremest views of Muslim religious zealots.  The title refers to the 10 minutes and 38 seconds Leila retains consciousness after her murder. Leila conjures up memories she didn't realize she possessed and reminisces on her life in the family she was born and the friends she loved that formed her chosen family.  The novel starts with the mystifying premise that despite her demise, Leila's mind hasn't shut down.  "The dead did not die instantly, they could, in fact continue to select on things, including their own demise."  Leila's heart stopped but her brain enters a realm of heightened awareness.  She reflects on her remarkable entry into the world and observations of the equanimity in death.  The midwife recognized the newborn as a stubborn & rebellious soul.  The wise midwife knew the way to get through life unscathed is to know when to enter & when to exit. Leila noted in the morgue "Cops and criminals shed their dead skin cells on the same floor, and the same dust mites gobbled them up, without favor or partiality."  The journey through Leila's life as viewed from within her corpse are hauntingly vivid.  The clock runs down on Leila's remaining minutes within her being uncovering moments in time that marked unknown milestones.  The ephemeral storytelling of the first half of the novel is intoxicating.  The 2nd half takes Leila out of the narration and delves into the lives of the friends who formed her true family.  These colorful characters mark outcasts of society: whores, transvestites, or political activists.  The novel's trajectory turns theological & political as viewed through these individuals.  Religion, power, money and politics are a manmade construct, construed as superstitious beliefs that hinder humans of insight and quashes self-esteem to the point where people mistrust & fear anything & everything.  Leila's devout friend is pained by the actualization religion which had brought her hope, love & resiliency oppresses others.  "The teachings that warmed her heart and brought her close to all humanity, regardless of creed, color or nationality, could be interpreted in such a way that they divided, confused and separated human beings, sowing seeds of enmity and bloodshed".  Shafak's astonishing novel adheres in the mind long after having been digested.  

Sarah Winman's TIN MAN is Mawkish Love Triangle

 Sarah Winman (b UK 1954) is a novelist and actress.  Her latest novel "Tin Man" is a mawkish love triangle between 2 men and a woman.  The two men met as young lads outside London and developed a life-long friendship.  Their friendship develops into a physical relationship between Michael and Ellis.  Michael is assured with his homosexuality whereas Ellis' emotions ebb and flow between love and shame.  As adults, Ellis meets Annie and the two marry.  A family of sorts is formed between all 3 with Ellis at the center of the happy trio.  Michael bears the horrible pain of loss & worry during the AIDS epidemic of the 80s.  Ellis' melancholy follows the death of his beloved mother and his equivocations regarding his sexual identity.  Annie is happy forming a trio. The novel is structured around a copy of Van Gogh's painting of sunflowers.  There is a major theme of loneliness and analogies of gay men who live their lives hidden.  Both Ellis and Michael narrate.  Michael's story is revealed mainly in an epistolary manner read by Ellis after Michael's death.  "Tin Man" aspires to be a literary elegy on art, love, loneliness and compassion.  I found the story mawkish & dull.  The writing is pedantic and the drama fatuous.  Ellis reflects on when their lives were less complicated.  "A brief window, not yet shattered, when music still stirred, when beer still tasted good when dreams could still be hatched at the sight of a plane careering across a perfect sky."  "Tin Man" aspires to an epiphany of transformation & acceptance.  I do not recommend TIN MAN which aims for loftiness but rings as hallow sounding as banging on the Tin Man where his heart was missing.    

Lucy Grealy's "Autobiography of a Face"

Irish/American award winning poet & memoirist Lucy Grealy (b Ireland 1963-02) has written a candid and absorbing auto-biography describing her consuming torment & self-loathing after surgery & treatment for cancer at age 9 left her face terribly disfigured.  The surgery necessitated the removal of a major portion of her lower jaw.  The next 15 years were consumed with multiple surgeries and permanent scaring from cruel comments & humiliating stares at her grossly misshapen face.  Grealy explores her feelings for the many years of feeling ostracized & unworthy of love because of her hideous face.  "I had lost out on the world of love only because of my looks."  Being ugly for Grealy meant a perpetual fear of being alone and isolated. Her attempts to feel gratitude did not suffice to stave off depression & misery.  The burden of being an outcast are marked by highlighted turning points in her life.  These cause us to pondering unassuming events that befall us yet mark profound impact on our lives.   The epiphanous moments jolting Grealy into reckoning how her life would play out strike a sharp cord within us.  She recalls the definitive moments in time when she believed she'd never have a boyfriend, acknowledged others the right to torment her and accepted a world in which ease & normalcy were not meant for her.  Sometimes, the subtlest moments descend upon us forging the way we perceive our lives.  Sometimes it's as impossible to reconcile the past as it is to foresee the future.  Grealy's writing is scathing, poetic and painful.  Grealy confronts our feelings of empathy, shame and insecurity.  "Autobiography of a Face" is a stark awakening of human foibles and the good fortunes taken for granted.  We're counseled against postponing happiness pending wishful circumstances.  Grealy discovers "Joy was a kind of fearlessness, a letting go of expectations that the world should be anything other than what it was."

The Grammarians - Identical Twins Obsessed with Each Other and Words - It's Absurd!

Identical twins Laurel and Daphne delight in their doppleganger attributes and are inseparable - until they're not!  As young girls they develop their own cryptic langue and fascination with words they find absurd.  Cathleen Schine's novel is at its beguiling best when the twin's were a complicated organism circumventing superfulous attachments.  The twins were within a magic circle that protected them from being alone.  They derided pleasure in their glib torment of those befuddled by their profound alignment. They share everything including a fatuous fascination with erudite vernacular.  Both are sticklers for grooming precise grammar.  (Their favorite musical is "My Fair Lady").  Oh wouldn't it be loverly if all remain in harmony between the sisters.  Whoa to the mister who comes between the sisters.  In actuality, the perfidy that forges a fissure between the sisters isn't caused by their spouses.  Their feud is fermented over a gargantuas Webster Dictionary and its pedestal.  Their beloved dad brought it home when they were saplings.  A shared cavalcade of tears following their father's death doesn't mitigate an altercation over sole ownership and tears their bond asunder.  Daphne dabbles as a pedantic copy editor & columnist.  Laurel's career as a school teacher takes a trajectory towards poetry.  The arcane prattle dissecting language is lugubrious. And, their quotidian lives banal. Schine's attempt to educate readers on the elusive and obvious fragments of the English language is lame.  "Language keeps changing.  And to understand language and teach it you have to know what is actually spoken."  Oh, lots of chatter that didn't matter. Why didn't Schine find twin dynamics dramatic enough material to materialize into something...loverly?

Nigerian Author Chigozie Obioma's Novel "An Orchestra of Minorities" is a Masterpiece

"An Orchestra of Minorities" is Chigozie Obioma's 2nd novel.  Both "The Fisherman" and this year's novel have been short-listed for the Man Booker.  Both works of fiction are beautifully crafted and deeply moving.  The narrator of "Minorities" is a chi; a guardian spirit who inhabits the body of a human host to offer protection and advice.  Chinonso is the chi's current host.  Chis are reincarnated spirits that are fused between spirit and body to form the ultimate bodily expression of creation.  The  chi presents Chinoso's life in testimony before a higher entities to dissuade them from condemning him for his errors an akliogoli, a vagabond spirit without a home in the heavenlies or on earth.  The chi speaks plaintively and regretfully for not having instilled Chinoso with wiser judgements.  This beautifuly written and tormenting tale contains a mixture of Igbo cosmology and African Lore, religion and culture.  At its core is a love story between Chinoso and Ndali.  A profound love derailed by an odyssey of tribulations befallen Chinoso that ruptures their union and destroys Chinoso and his beloved.  The chi argues nothing cripples a human being more than unrequited and rebuffed love.  "To harbor hatred in the heart is to keep an unfed tiger in a house filled with children."  There are rules governing how much influence a chi may impose on his host.  A chi cannot coerce its host, even in the face of the most violent dangers to himself or others.  It's the persuasive voice of man's conscience that is omnipotent and relinquishes the guidance of one's chi.  Obioma's skill with language is entrancing. We hear native tongues and current cadences in the "White Man's Language."  Chigozie's imagined world of Igbo cosmology is captivating and mystifying.  Still, it's the magnificent literary power of this absorbing work that gives "An Orchestra of Minorities" its celestial resonance. "The old fathers say that if a secret is kept for too long, even the deaf will come to hear it."