Ravenously Hungry Girls

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“Sometimes life can pull a lot out of you, Althea. Just squeeze you dry. And if you don’t have a way to get back whatever’s good and precious to you, it’s like losing your soul.” Mama

I finished reading The Care and Feeding of Ravenously Hungry Girls by Anissa Gray at 1:45 AM on a cold wintry night. To say I couldn’t stop reading and turn out my light is an understatement. Family epic- three generations. The first generation consists of a mother of four children, who dies very young leaving behind a husband who is a neglectful traveling evangelist, who leaves for months at a time saving souls. So who cares for these children? The oldest daughter Althea becomes the substitute mother which makes her into a family control freak in later years. Althea cares for brother Joe, who is abused by the father when he does return home- as in beats him with an extension cord. She cares for two little sisters, Viola who is very bright and tries to be a perfect student so she can escape the family via college and career which she does, and little Lillian who ends up left at home with brother Joe when teenage Althea marries and leaves home. Lillian suffers at the hands of brother Joe who keeps her locked in a closet under the stairs, Harry Potter style, except Lillian stays locked in for several days at a time with no food, water or bathroom. Hence it’s a story of how these traumatized kids grow into adults. There is a plot twist when Althea and her husband Proctor are arrested for white collar crimes relating to their restaurant. So as the family reconciles itself to their incarceration, the question is who is to raise their twin teenage daughters, Baby Vi and Kim. And how do these adults still coping with their own trauma help these girls through their trauma?

The family trauma shows up in various ways with the characters. Viola is a therapist who struggles for decades with bulimia and suffers a terrible relapse which prevents her from responding appropriately when Lillian calls her for help with the nieces. Lillian, who has inherited and remodeled the family home, suffers from obsessive compulsiveness in which she makes numerous “rounds” at night locking and relocking doors, always touching the door frame while saying “Safe.” Brother Joe becomes a minister and wants his wife and him to take the girls to live with them. At the time of this suggestion, Lillian begins to tell Viola about the abuse and neglect she suffered at the hands of Joe and confronts him in the presence of Viola. And the twin girls? One is suffering silently and developing symptoms of an eating disorder, while the other is acting out at school and running away. So how will these hurting souls reconcile all the evils and ills of their life as a family? Fortunately, Gray doesn’t sugar coat the characters or the plot. Does the story end happily? Not particularly, but I was left satisfied and hopeful at 1:45 when I turned out the light.

One of the aspects that is most striking to me is the manner in which Gray writes about Viola’s bulimia. It is not with an academic understanding. It is visceral and experiential. Some of the most poignant quotes are about Viola’s experiences. Viola says”…like that fuzzy, soothing white noise, that sense of peace and calm I feel when I’ve fed to the point of bursting, purged until I’m flat bellied and empty. Doing it again and again even though I’m dying a little more each time….As I head to the bathroom again, I touch my drum-tight belly like it holds life. But in my mind, what I see is a wasted little girl with the empty, distended gut of the malnourished. I’ll feel better soon, though. There will be at least a moment’s peace and calm before the crashing to self-loathing, which is another hole entirely.” In her acknowledgements, Gray thanks the Atlanta Center for Eating Disorders for saving her life. Thus, the possible explanation for these vivid sections of this book.

There are some strong women in this story, who in spite of terrible things keep this extended family in one piece. It’s not always a pretty picture, but thus is life.

Oh, The Troubles Ireland Has Seen

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We have two books this week on part of Irish history called the Troubles, the armed conflict between Protestants and Catholics in Northern Ireland. The Troubles is the expression used about the irregular war between these two religious groups that begins in earnest in 1916 with the Easter Uprising and officially ends with the Good Friday Agreement in 1998. The fighting was sporadic and intense for almost eighty years. The first book has just been published called Say Nothing: A a True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland by Patrick Radden Keefe, a journalist at The New Yorker. It is the very well documented story of the murder of Jean McConville, a mother of 10 children who was abducted and murdered by the IRA in 1972. Her bones were finally found in 2003. The second book is Troubles, a winner of the Lost Man Booker Prize. J.G. Farrell published his book in 1970 and drowned in 1979. This historical fiction won its award in 2010 as a special edition of the Man Booker Prize awarded to books not eligible in 1970 due to a rules alteration. The plot begins in 1919 following The Great War when Major Brendan Archer goes to Ireland to see his assumed fiancée Angela Spencer. It is described as a dark heartbreaking comedy. And yes, that is an oxymoronic description.

Keefe in his book called Say Nothing documents much of the 20th century conflict as told around the disappearance and subsequent murder of Jean McConville. Jean was a Catholic woman who had been married to a Protestant. She is accused by the IRA of being an informer, hence the reason for her murder. The term ” The Disappeared” refers to people who disappeared at the hands of the IRA. Usually the IRA would dump a dead body on a back road as a warning, but eighteen people disappeared with no clue as to where their remains were to be found. As of today, fourteen of the eighteen bodies have been recovered as part of the peace process. Informers were especially punished as well as their families whether they knew the disappeared was an informer or not. Keefe writes, ” Perhaps the cruelest feature of forced disappearances as an instrument of war is that denies the bereaved any such closure, relegating them to a permanent limbo of uncertainty.” In discussing Jean’s ten orphaned children, Keefe says, “The whispers about Jean had started not long after her death, the notion that she might have been executed for being a tout (informer). As if it were not misfortune enough to be orphaned at a young age and cast into austere and predatory Irish orphanages, the children had come of age bearing that incendiary stigma.” And these traumatized children grew up to be traumatized adults- such a sad part of this sad book. Jean’s body was recovered in 2003, and her remains were identified by a large diaper pin she always wore on her clothes in case one of the ten children needed it. Around this story of Jean and her family, Keefe weaves the life stories of the IRA members responsible for her disappearance including Gerry Adams. The people responsible had long family ties with the nationalist Catholic IRA movement which wanted Ireland to leave the United Kingdom and be an independent and unified country. Several of the IRA members guilty of Jean’s death had family involved in the Easter Rising of 1916 which gave rise to the separatists party and political arm of the IRA, the Sinn Fein. Their stories are equally as riveting as Jean’s.

Farrell’s book, Troubles is set against the Irish War of Independence which started in 1919. Major Archer thinks he is engaged to Angela Spencer because they corresponded throughout World War 1. He goes to their home which is the Majestic Hotel to formally ask for her hand, and things just do not go as planned. The major gets caught up in the crazy dysfunction of the Spencer family, which is a privileged Anglo-Irish family which once was very wealthy. The hotel has an assortment of odd-balls who live there along with the Spencer family and now the major. The hotel serves as a metaphor to the armed conflict taking place in Ireland. A review in The Guardian says, “Farrell’s portrayal of the fast-decaying Majestic Hotel and England’s even more rapidly crumbling rule in Ireland surely adds up to one of the best books…” As I read Troubles, I pitied the poor shell-shocked major who struggles to have a clear thought. And here he is all tangled up and enmeshed in the bat-crazy Spencer family.

While we are on the subject of Ireland, there are about a dozen films that have been made about Ireland and the Troubles. One I really enjoy is called The Journey which I saw at the Fairhope Film Festival in 2016. It is historical fiction surrounding the negotiations between Ian Paisley, the firebrand Protestant preacher and politician and Martin McGinness, the Sinn Fein politician who forged an unlikely political alliance and friendship. These two men in real life formed an Irish government in 2007 with Paisley being the First Minister and McGinness being the deputy First Minister. The plot of the movie is about a fictional “road trip” these two enemies embark on as they negotiate the future of Ireland. There is humor, yes, but the power of reconciliation between two very different and very ingrained belief systems is a powerful message for our country today.

PONDERINGS: 3532 people were killed during the 30-year Troubles with 52% of them being civilians. The number of injured people is close to 50,000. Sarah Nelson, a social worker and author, writes about the bombings, riots, food and housing shortages, and unemployment that came about because of the Troubles, and she says, it caused a “breakdown of the normal fabric of society, allowing for paramilitaries to exert a strong influence in certain districts.” One of the Margarets in my beloved book club says there are still walls separating neighborhood streets in Northern Ireland. Sadly, Brexit is stirring up some issues about Ireland, especially the future of Northern Ireland. Too complicated for me to address here, but google it to educate yourself and put it on your radar to follow.

Happy St. Patrick’s Day!

The Air You Breathe

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“I felt a strange kind of resignation as I watched Graca with the Blue Moon boys: it was no use vying for their attentions; how could a sparrow compete with a peacock? How could a shrub compete with a blossom?” Dores Pimentel

Every now and then there is a book that reaches out and grabs your heart and soul. The Air You Breathe by Frances de Pontes Peebles is one of those books. The setting is Brazil during the 1920s and 1930s, Hollywood during the Golden Age of the 1950s and 1960s, and then Las Vegas. It begins with two girls living on a sugar cane plantation in Brazil- Graca is the beautiful daughter of the owner, and Dores is a Afro-Brazilian illegitimate child of a prostitute being raised as a kitchen girl. Graca has a God-given voice and her goal is to be “magnificent”. Dores is very intelligent and is a born survivor. Together they share a love of music, in particularly the love of samba. According to Peebles, samba is part of the Bahia culture in Brazil, a street music with African origins brought to Brazil by slaves. Using today’s terminology, she describes it as a hip-hop vibe. Graca’s family would consider samba as “too black” and beneath her social standing, but that doesn’t stop Graca from becoming an international samba star much like Carmen Miranda. Dores doesn’t have the looks or the voice, so she becomes the stage manager for Graca and the Blue Moon Band. Dores also becomes an internationally famous and wealthy song writer of samba music. The novel is the story of their intense, and I repeat, intense friendship of two decades. It’s no spoiler that Graca dies young, and Dores lives to 95. Dores says everyone is dead, and now she can tell the story her way.

Peebles does an incredible job constructing this story. Each section is defined by one of Dores’ songs. Her music helps her hold onto her past; her memories are defined by her music. Dores was a lyricist so the songs are in poem form, and they are beautiful. Peebles wrote the original lyrics because she wanted the authenticity of them being Dores’ works. The title of the book comes from one of Dores’ most famous lyrics, and one which truly defines her relationship with Graca. Dores is willing to be as invisible as the air Graca breathes just to be in Graca’s orbit. Dores, who is bisexual loves Graca in many ways- romantic, sisterly, as childhood besties. Graca doesn’t seem to have a lot of capacity to love. She is too driven and narcissistic. Their’s was a friendship of love, loyalty, shared goals, but the friendship turns dark with rivalry, jealousy, betrayal, way too much enmeshment.

After one of Graca’s most heartbreaking career betrayals of Dores, Dores says, “It’s in these moments that we’re confronted with life’s cruel indifference to our survival. We realize that we are at the mercy of forces we cannot fathom; the control we thought we’d exerted over our lives slips like a fish through our hands. This is how I felt that night, after Graca closed her Copa show.” And Graca? Dores says, “In every success there is loss, and in every failure, a gain. Graca knew this better than anyone.” And yes, great loss comes after this Copa show.

I’m as fascinated by Peebles as I am about her book. She is Brazilian-American, a graduate of the prestigious Iowa Writers Workshop, grew up in Miami, graduated from University of Texas in Austin, lived for several years on her family’s coffee farm in Brazil. In her original draft, Peebles has Graca as the main voice. Graca is based on some real experiences of Carmen Miranda. But fortunately for us as readers, she ultimately tells the story through Dores. Read this book.

Ponderings: Peebles’s website is worth spending time on. She has some podcasts of interviews and a link to Project Heirloom, where she tells stories of some American families and their journeys. I highly recommend reading some of the stories. Also listen to the vintage sambas on her playlist on this link https://www.npr.org/sections/altlatino/2018/08/30/642750837/samba-and-saudade-the-inspirations-behind-the-air-you-breathe

francespeebles.com

Harold and Queenie- An End of Life Journey

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“Harold Fry is walking. But in another way, even though you are here, even though you’ve done your traveling, you’re starting a journey too. It’s the same and not the same. You see?” Sister Mary Inconnu

Rachel Joyce is so much fun to read! Her novel The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry is one of my all-time favorite books. Somehow I missed her companion story The Love Song of Miss Queenie Hennessy when it was published a few years ago. If you remember, Harold starts walking the length of England after receiving a note from an old friend, Queenie to say basically that she was dying at St. Bernadine’s Hospice in Berwick-upon-Tweed. He goes to post a return letter and impulsively decides to walk to her. Harold sends Queenie postcards asking her to wait for him along the 627 mile journey that takes him 87 days. He has lots of time to reflect back on his life, his marriage, his son who commits suicide and his work relationship with Queenie. The Love Song gives us Queenie’s experience. She has been in love with Harold for twenty years. Harold may not have realized it, but his son David figured it out. Queenie’s relationship with David turns out to be the biggest secret she kept from Harold. With the encouragement of Sister Mary Inconnu, Queenie begins writing her confessional love letter to Harold for the Sister to give to Harold when he first arrives at St. Bernadine’s. Sister Mary Inconnu volunteers to type everything Queenie writes, and everyday she comes to Queenie’s bedside with her typewriter. Queenie tells Harold of her life over the past twenty years- her beach cottage, her rock garden, the people she met along the way while living with a heart full of love for him.

Harold attracts media attention and soon dozens of strangers join his pilgrimage. He is written up in the print media, he is on television, there are Twitter hashtags with Harold’s name, Queenie’s name, live forever, unlikely pilgrimage. Meanwhile at St. Bernadine’s, Queenie’s fellow patients are caught up in the excitement. There is a Harold Fry bulletin board in the commons room with all his postcards to Queenie. Strangers send muffins, flowers, notes of well-wishes and encouragement. Everyone declares the desire to still be alive when Harold shows up. A welcome party is planned, banners made, and the menu is planned. The excitement is palatable. Fellow patient, Mr. Henderson quotes to Queenie, “How oft…when men are at the point of death have they been merry!”

All the while, Queenie stays in bed with pencil and her notebook writing her confessional letter to Harold. She blames herself for so much tragedy in Harold’s life. Sister Mary Inconnu tells her none of this is her fault. “‘All those years you blamed yourself…’ I began to cry. It is not with pain. It is a sort of relief…I can let them go. My head is silent. The sorrow has not gone but it no longer hurts.” The end of life peace we all hope for.

Christina Ianzito, writing for The Washington Post says, “In the end, this lovely book is full of joy. Much more than a story of a woman’s enduring love for an ordinary, flawed man, it’s an ode to messy, imperfect, glorious, unsung humanity.” Couldn’t said it better myself.

Memories and Love Letters

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I’ve just finished a delightful debut novel by Swedish writer Sofia Lindbergh entitled The Red Address Book. The story is told by Doris Alm, now 96 years old, who is in declining health in Stockholm. Her only living relative is her great-niece Jenny now living and raising her family in San Francisco. Doris has begun writing her life story for Jenny because she doesn’t want her memories to die when she does. She uses her red address book given to her as a young girl by her father to prompt her memory. It saddens Doris that just about everyone listed in her book is now dead. She has outlived everyone who ever meant anything to her except Jenny.

A reoccurring subject throughout her writings is of Allan Smith, who she met as a young woman in Paris. It was love at first sight for both of them. Allan was half-American and half-French and was in Paris studying architecture. They spent every waking moment together during those months preceding Hitler rise to power in Germany. Allan’s father forces him to leave Paris on such a short notice he doesn’t have a chance to tell Doris. For her it’s like he just vanishes into thin air while Europe is thrown into the frenzy of World War 2. Doris and her younger sister Agnes become displaced by the war and end up in America. She looks for Allan everywhere and finally sees him for one glorious night before he leaves to fight in Europe. She wears the locket with his picture in it for the next 70 years as she writes letters to him that are undeliverable.

Jenny comes to Stockholm when Doris falls and breaks her hip. Jenny is able to read Doris’s writings and talk to her about their family including Jenny’s drug-addicted mother. Jenny also learns about Doris’s life-long love of Allan and puts her husband Willie on a search to find out what happened to him. It’s a poignant part of the story.

Doris lives such an interesting life full of all kinds of people, and the author fleshes out all the characters so well. There’s Agnes, her younger sister who stays in America when Doris returns to Europe. There’s Gosta Nilsson who is a painter of modern art who does not receive fame during his lifetime, but is always there for Doris. In fact Doris lives with him in Stockholm for 20 years after the war. And of course, Jenny who is so devoted to Doris, and if you have a favorite aunt you’ll enjoy reading about Jenny and Doris’s relationship.

There is so much more to tell you, but it would spoil some wonderful surprises. So you’ll have to read The Red Address Book yourself to find out. It’s a fun and easy read- perfect for a trip or a lazy weekend.

The Secret of Birchwood Manor

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Birchwood Manor is one of the trickiest “characters” in Kate Morton’s new novel, The Clockmaker’s Daughter”, which was published in the fall of 2018. The presence of this gothic old estate permeates the novel with its secrets and mysteries. And few writers do these kind of secrets and mysteries as well as Kate Morton. The novel spans time from the 1850s with Birdie’s early life as a clockmaker’s daughter to contemporary times with Elodie as a London archivist working to unlock the secrets of the house and her family’s surprising part in its history. As with all Morton’s books, it is a complex and rich narrative spanning time and characters. It’s a huge puzzle of different time periods concentrated in the years of 1862, the turn of the 20th century and decade of World War 1, the war years of the mid 1940s and contemporary times. Morton weaves the lives of Birdie aka Lily, Lucy, Juliet and Elodie around Birchwood Manor, an old leather satchel, a photograph of a beautiful young woman and a missing 23-carat blue diamond known as the Radcliffe Blue. Morton is up to the challenge of this haunting tale.

The summer of 1862 has Edward Radcliffe, Lucy’s older brother and Lily’s lover, painting with artist friends at the house. A terrible tragedy ensues leaving a woman dead, another woman missing and the Radcliffe Blue gone. So the puzzle is fitting these pieces together over the next 150 years as the house becomes different things to different people. Lucy, brilliant Lucy, turns it into a girls boarding school and then into a museum after she inherits it from Edward. Juliet, Elodie’s grandmother brings her children here after their London home is bombed during the blitz of World War 2, which is why Elodie’s great uncle Tip is visibly disturbed when she shows him the picture of the beautiful young woman taken years earlier, yet he admits to nothing. She gets no information from him except the location of the house. Elodie leaves immediately for the estate to investigate her family’s history to this mysterious house.

The novel is full of beautiful phrases and descriptions. Morton loves old atmospheric houses that can accommodate her bewitching and enchanting plots and characters. Birchwood Manor does not disappoint. Edward writes in 1861, “I have bought a house. A rather charming house, which although not grand is of elegant proportions. It sits like a humble, dignified bird, within its own bend of the river, on the edge of the woods, by a small but perfectly formed village. It is a craftsman’s house, with bespoke joinery and thoughtful details. However, the house’s beauty is not defined by aesthetic measures alone. It is a house that emerged from the land on which it sits…there is something else within the house that draws me, something old and essential and not entirely of this world. It has called to me for a long time, you see, for my new house and I are not strangers.”

I understand the audiobook of this novel is beautifully done, however I cannot imagine following the plot line by listening only. There are many voices and time periods. The voice of Birdie/Lily seems to be the main current in the flow. Her sections are not dated because she exists outside time and space, but she connects the plot as it builds towards the revealing of Birchwood Manor’s long-held secret.

Enjoy watching Kate Morton’s introduction to this rewarding read.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=AzefRB67TYQ&feature=youtu.be

A MINDFUL GRACE-FILLED LIFE

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I have just read Present Over Perfect: Leaving Behind Frantic for a Simpler, More Soulful Way of Living by Shauna Niequist and Women Rowing North: Navigating Life’s Currents and Flourishing as We Age by Mary Pipher. I read them back to back. Shauna is 40 years old and Mary is 70. I’m closer to Mary’s age than Shauna’s. Both books were about living in a mindful grace-filled way which nourishes our hearts and bodies. Both are full of pearls of wisdom told through honest self-disclosure and humble humor. I wish I could have read Shauna’s book when I was forty and full of striving and hustling, addicted to achievement and faking perfection. This book is the wake-up call I needed then and still do. Father Richard Rohr is quoted as saying, “the skills that take you through the first half of your life are entirely unhelpful for the second half.” Shauna and I agree that neither of us have had healthy emotional skills from time to time, but there can be growth toward courageous living. This is where Mary’s book will be a valuable resource as I continue to age. She calls it a guidebook for us as we age to learn that “Everything is workable.” She addresses grief, how to recognize our own contentment, loneliness versus solitude, and familial changes.

Both women talk about making your own life- or remaking it. Mary says, “There are many lifetimes in a life.” Shauna writes, “This life you’re building is entirely your creation, fashioned out of your dreams and fears…The world will tell you how to live, if you let it. Don’t let it…This is your chance to make or remake a life that thrills you.” Mary says wisdom tells us the difference between who we are told we are and who we claim we are. Mary also speaks of rewriting our narrative, our story. She writes that we need to construct or reconstruct stories that help us flourish, that heal and empower us. She says, “We can explore our uncelebrated virtues and our survival skills.” Mary quotes Rebecca Solnit, “A few stories are sinking ships, and many of us go down with these ships even when the lifeboats are bobbing all around us…We think we tell stories, but stories often tell us, tell us to love or to hate, to see or to be blind. Often, too often, stories saddle us, ride us, whip us onward, tell us what to do and we do it without questioning.” This has me thinking of some narratives that need to be rewritten in my life.

One thing both women stress is the importance of friends, “heart to heart friends” is what Mary calls them. Friends, who walk our journey beside us, supporting us, reminding us who we really are, kind of friends. With Shauna, these friends are a lot of mothers of young children like her. With Mary, these friends help each other adapt to the changes of late middle age which include grieving a lost spouse or one’s health. She calls them “our first responders” in troubled times. One of the things that has amazed my grown daughter who has returned after 14 years away is the number of heart to heart friends I have. These are friends who have walked some hard miles with me, who have loved and encouraged me. I’m truly blessed by these friends, and I’m glad my daughter is here to see the treasure of these kind of friendships.

I have four pages of notes from these two books. Most are more appropriate for my journal than for a blog. These are those kind of books. You feel your awareness increase from page to page. These books are full of memorable quotes that are truly journal worthy, to savor time and again. Good food for thought in this second month of a new year.

Unsheltered

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“…without shelter, we stand in daylight.”

Barbara Kingsolver’s new book Unsheltered grew on me slowly until the final chapters found me reading at 2 AM. The shelter is a falling down old brick house- literally- at Sixth and Plum in Vineland, New Jersey. The residents are two different families who live at this location a century apart. Willa and her family live there in our decade, and the Greenwoods live in the house during the mid to late 19th century. Both families are struggling to reconcile life as they know it with familial and societal changes over which they have no control. Both families have to learn to maneuver these challenges with all the grace they can possibly muster. Shelter becomes a metaphor for a dwelling- “You can’t shelter in a place when there isn’t a place”; a sense of community- “I saw you and Dad…hitching your wagon to the tenure star…you made such a big deal about security that you sacrificed giving us any long-term community”; relationships that shelter our spirits, such as Mary and Thatcher’s professional relationship as well as Willa and her husband Iano; and finally our vocations that shelter our interests and passions which aren’t always synonymous with job security. Life can also shelter us or not which Willa and Thatcher both discover in painful ways. Tig, Willa’s daughter, tells her mother, “Everybody your age is, like, crouching inside this box made of what they already believe. You think it’s a fallout shelter or something but it’s a piece of shit box, Mom. It’s a cardboard, drowning in the rain, going all floppy. And you’re saying, ‘This is all there is, it will hold up fine. This box will keep me safe.'” Ouch. Life throws us curveballs, and it’s hard to adapt, especially when truth isn’t thought to be relevant as Thatcher realizes. He wonders, “How can a man tell the truth, and be reviled for it?”

Unsheltered is historical fictional with real people interacting with fictional characters. Vineland, New Jersey is a real place which was settled as an utopian community in 1861 by Charles Landis who wanted a progressive, alcohol free community. Education was of the utmost importance both for girls and children with special needs. Landis was a control freak who murdered a local journalist who published articles about the oppressive atmosphere in Vineland and publicly questions the mental state of Landis’s wife. Landis pleaded not guilty based on insanity which is a first and was found not guilty. Many famous people are associated with Vineland, including Mary Treat (1830-1923). Treat was a self-educated naturalist/botanist who authored a book on insects. She plays a vital role in the story as a confidante and friend of fictional Thatcher Greenwood. In real life Treat was a regular correspondent with Charles Darwin.

Speaking of Darwin, he is a main character because in the mid to late 19th century, Thatcher, a scientist and instructor at a school in Vineland has to constantly defend Darwin’s theories and teaching scientific method to Mr. Cutler, a controlling administrator and lackey of Landis. In fact Thatcher gets fired because he will not teach what we today would call creationism. Classic arguments of religion versus science- some we still hear today. Cutler is described as believing a “brand of science [that] is an edifice built of scriptures and saints.” He quotes Genesis 8:19 to Thatcher and then tells him God parted the waters of the Atlantic Ocean so animals originally on the ark could walk over to the Western Hemisphere. It’s a great scene!

The novel is loaded with great characters and great quotes. Kingsolver is able to develop the oppressive atmosphere of the Victorian age as well as the chaos of our decade. We are such products of our environment and culture unless we actively and mindfully work to see through the veil, and often there are consequences attached to that exercise. And yet, most of the time it’s worth it.

“To stand in the clear light of day, unsheltered.”

Beneath a Scarlet Sky- A True Story of a Great Italian Guy

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Mark Sullivan’s historical/biographical novel Beneath a Scarlet Sky won a thumbs-up by my beloved book club a few months ago. It is based on the true story of a great Italian guy, Pino Lella, who played a part in the Allies’ success in northern Italy. Pino, who is now about 90 years old is an unsung hero of World War 2. At seventeen years old, Pino and his little brother are sent to a Catholic boys camp in the Alps on the border between Italy and Switzerland because their hometown of Milan was being bombed. The boys summered at this camp and were close to Father Re who ran it. Father Re had taught all his campers to hike in the mountains, so when Pino arrived to escape the bombing, he immediately had Pino recondition himself to the altitude and endurance difficulties. Father Re was helping Italian Jews escape over the Alps into Switzerland, and guess who became his key guide? Yep, it was Pino who took dozens of Jews, including a pregnant woman over the treacherous mountain route to safety. Pino’ son said later that “the missions gave [his dad] an identity, a meaningful purpose, and an opportunity to lead. And like many 17 year-olds, with reckless abandon, he thrived on the excitement and adventure of it all.” You’ll have to read Sullivan’s book to learn how Pino at the age of 19 becomes the driver of one of Hitler’s key generals in Italy, Hans Leyers- and becomes an Allied spy at the same time! You can’t make this stuff up!

I am fascinated by this General Hans Leyers, who oversaw the slave labor camps in Italy where millions of Italian citizen/slaves perished under the harshest of conditions. The Nazis called it Vernichtung durch Arbeit- extermination by labor, part of Hitler’s Final Solution. Albert Speers oversaw all the Nazi labor camps and technically Leyers answered to Speers. Leyers claims to have never answered to Speers, only to Hitler himself. Let me just cut through to the chase about this bad apple- Leyers is not tried at Nuremberg for war crimes. He serves 23 months in an Allied POW camp, but Sullivan says no records of his interrogation exist. Leyers testifies against Speer and cuts his own deal with the Allies. Speer serves twenty years in Spandau Prison. Sullivan says Leyers was “so devastatingly good at burning his way out of history” that there are no records left testifying to his role in perpetrating war crimes against Italians and the Allies. How does this happen? One clue is a lesson Leyers teaches Pino about doing favors for people as a means of survival. Leyers says, “Doing favors…they help wondrously over the course of a lifetime. When you have done men favors, when you look out for others so they can prosper, they owe you. With each favor, you become stronger, more supported. It is a law of nature.” So what favors has Leyers been doing while in Italy? Apparently a lot because Leyers spends the rest of his long life in Germany remodeling his wife’s inherited estate and building his local parish church building located on the road named after him!

Italian author and historian Michele Battini calls Leyers avoidance of justice “the missing Italian Nuremberg” which is the title of his book. Battini writes that the Allies intended a trial of German war crimes in Italy but investigations stopped in 1946 with very few people prosecuted. He says the Italian government was complicit in stopping the planned trials because it was hoping that the Fascist war crimes in the Balkins would be forgotten. Basically European governments and the ruling class in Europe were let off the hook for their parts in Nazism and their collaboration with Hitler when it suited their purposes. Battini writes of the “divided memory” and “collective amnesia”of these countries and cultures.

How does someone like Pino live with the trauma and tragedies of this war? Read what his 89-year-old-self said to Mark Sullivan not too long ago, “Life is change, constant change, and unless we are lucky enough to find comedy in it, change is nearly always a drama, if not a tragedy. But after everything, and even when the skies turn scarlet and threatening, I still believe that if we are lucky enough to be alive, we must give thanks for the miracle of every moment of every day, no matter how flawed. And we must have faith in God, and in the Universe, and in a better tomorrow, even if that faith is not always deserved.”

Yad Vashem in Israel named Father Luigi Re the “Righteous Among the Nations” for his role in saving Italian Jews.

primolevicenter.org

marksullivanbooks.com

Transcription- Spies and War’

ceilstriplin3 Comments

I’ve read several of Kate Atkinson’s novels with A God in Ruins being my favorite. Her new novel Transcription is again based in England during World War 2. It’s full of MI15/British Security Service spies in hunt of traitors and moles in sympathy with Nazi Germany and then later with Stalin’s USSR. Churchill is quoted as saying there was “spy-mania” in Great Britain during these years. The public thought the country was overrun with German spies. There are several main themes running through the novel which are based on fact. One being MI15 was very instrumental in Britain’s fight against enemy espionage and in feeding Germany false information by using the Double Cross System using double agents. At the beginning of the war, the Service is grossly understaffed, and it is overwhelmed by the work increase caused by the war. This accounts why the Service hires Atkinson’s main character, 18 year old naive Juliet Armstrong to be a transcriber. Also, MI15 has to deal with British citizens, referred to as the Fifth Column, who are initially friendly toward Nazism and Communism. These sympathizers have to be spied upon to prevent domestic subversion. Furthermore, there is a gay spy- Perry Gibbons who tries to hide his sexual preference by passing off Juliet as his fiancé. Homosexuality is illegal in Britain at this time. Remember Alan Turing, the famous British code breaker during the war who later helped develop the first computer. He is chemically castrated by the British government in lieu of prison when he is prosecuted in 1952. He commits suicide in 1954.

I love spy novels, always have. I like the themes running through this novel and the way Atkinson has the two different time periods- the war years and the 1950s. I like her balance between the periods. There is a gap of a couple of decades, 1960s and 1970s when we’re told Juliet is living in Italy in an apparent successful attempt to escape the work of the Service. I would like a little more story about those years, especially the Italian lover part. Who casually mentions an Italian lover and then doesn’t give juicy details?

I have ambivalent feelings about Juliet and Atkinson’s style in developing her character. Obviously Juliet is intelligent. She attends an academically rigorous academy but drops out when her mother dies. I understand she is a thinker. I get it. I’m a 5 on the Enneagram. I am a thinker. I have a rich inner dialogue going at all times. The author puts Juliet’s inner dialogue in parenthesis. Some examples: “She was wearing a gorgeous dress. (“Schiaparelli. Ancient, of course. I’ve had nothing new since war was declared. I’ll be in rags soon”.)”; “There are difficulties ahead, but you will weather them,” she intoned. (Was the Sibyl at Delphi this insipid? Juliet wondered.)” Juliet also rhymes everyone’s name when she is introduced to them- “Lester Pelling (rhymes with lemming, Juliet thought)…” I found the parenthesis device distracting. It made Juliet always seem flippant and shallow, and I really think she had some depth to her that could have been more developed. At one point, “Juliet sighed and wondered if one day she would think herself to death. Was it possible? And would it be painful?” I never could quite decide if she was an airhead or a deep thinker with a wacky sense of humor. I would appreciate your thoughts after you read the book. And do read the book. It will be a great way to spend a winter weekend!