The Wailing Wind by Tony Hillerman

This writer was recommended by E Annie Proulx at a talk Theo and I went to recently. She said he writes from the Navajo point of view, and indeed you do learn a bit about American Indian rites and beliefs as you wade through the story. Apart from that though there’s not much to this book: it’s a detective story set in Arizona (quite close to where we shall be travelling later this year), and tells the story of a murder over gold rights. It’s artlessly written, a yarn rather than a piece of literature, and I found the detailed descriptions of people pouring coffee and packing sack lunches needlessly dull. 2 stars for the Indian content.

The Boat by Nam Le

This is the most wonderful collection of short stories by a young Australian writer, Nam Le. Rather than writing solely about the Vietnamese ‘ethnic story’ experience, as he describes it, Nam Le spans the experiences of the underclasses in many parts of the world. The stories range from the lives of young ‘soldiers’ in Colombia to the experience of a young child witnessing the bombing of Hiroshima to a teenager coming of age in a coastal Victorian town. They are such authentic stories that you feel Nam Le has actually lived these lives and been in these places and times, though of course it is patently impossible. The most moving for me was the story entitled The Boat, which describes in devastating – and there’s a sense of it being almost real time - detail the flight of a sixteen year old Vietnamese girl on a dilapidated junk. It’s the most moving and horrifying account of the experiences of refugees who escape on boats that I’ve ever read and I feel certain it is founded in truth. Every paranoid red neck who screams about so-called illegal immigrants coming here on boats should be forced to read this story.

At Home by Bill Bryson

This book came with me to the south coast for a fortnight and it took me the whole two weeks to read. That wasn’t because it was hard going: on the contrary it is written with Bill Bryson’s trademark wit and ease of language. The reason it took so long was that is was absolutely fascinating. This is a book about social history. It uses Bryson’s rectory home in England as that starting point of an investigation into the Victorian period. This inevitably takes him on a journey right around the world as he explores the influence of global trade and political machinations on his sleepy village in England. I kept reading a chapter and the putting it down to think about and then to regale my fellow holiday makers with half a dozen utterly fascinating facts that I’d just discovered. I don’t often even think about re-reading books but I wanted to begin this one again as soon as I had finished it. It is definitely a book to buy and keep and dip back into whenever you have the opportunity. 5 stars

The Epic of Gilgamesh

I was inspired to reread this document by a wonderful art book I am reading, slowly, called Art, the Whole Story. It’s a history of art and treats civilizations chronologically, so it’s really a history of society as well. There’s a section on Mesopotamia, the cradle of civilization, that intrigued me greatly. I knew about Mesopotamia but, not having studied ancient history, it was all very sketchy. So first I delved into more information about Mesopotamia, the Sumerians, the city states, Babylon and so forth and then I got hold of the epic, which I had studied at uni and promptly forgotten.

It’s the story of Gilgamesh, the king if Uruk, two thirds god and one third man, and out of control really. While he is lord and protector, he is also fighting and killing people, sleeping with all the virgins and generally behaving like a bit of a naughty lad. The gods create a friend and companion for him, Enkindu, a wild man who has to be tamed from his life with the animals. He is tamed by a harlot who tempts him and seduces him, and he becomes conscious of his role as man. He and Gilgamesh journey to the mountains to kill the giant Humbaba (what a great name) and bring back cedar for their city. The gods decree that Enkindu must die and Gilgamesh is left bereft. He travels to the ends of the earth to meet Utnapishtim, the equivalent of Noah, who tells him he will never find the life he is seeking ie immortality. He does in fact get to grasp a plant that offers immortality but it is stolen away from him by a serpent. He accepts his fate and returns home, eventually to die the beloved king.

The biblical parallels are really interesting, especially the story of the flood that Utnapishtim tells Gilgamesh. The gods are also fascinating, so quixotic, so similar to the Greek and Roman gods that followed them.

It’s a very short thing, a collection of writings that survived from a great library on twelve clay tablets, so there is stuff missing and I believe no real guarantee of how it all goes together. But it really is the beginning of literature, one of the earliest of works still existing I think: the story dates back to about 3000BC and the tablets to the 7th century BC

Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy

At last I got around to reading what many people say is their favourite and one of the greatest novels ever written. I hadn’t read any Tolstoy before and was surprised at how lucid and simple the language is, much like Churchill’s speeches, clear and without needless embellishment but with a fineness of meaning that often takes your breath away. I was prepared for the sad tale of Anna, but amazed at how realistic the collapse of her mental state seemed. I could really see the decline and fall of this woman. And I was delighted with Levin, who is a bit of a self portrait of Tolstoy’s, a man who struggles with his role as a landowner, with his faith and with the entire meaning of existence. I saw the film The Last Station recently and between that, and seeing the wonderful performance of Uncle Vanya that Sydney Theatre Company put on late last year, I really feel as if I am gaining some sort of handle on the Russian situation, then of course, not now.
So back to the book. Brilliant, a masterpiece, all the clichés. It took me a month to read it, dipping in and out, because it’s not a story you race through. I was glad to have the time and a peaceful environment in which to explore it and to think about the concepts and enjoy the language, and glad to be old enough to understand and have experienced the aspects of human nature that Tolstoy explores.
5 stars

Stuff White People Like by Christian Lander

One of the things Lander says that white people like is irony. And this book is all irony. It’s a fairly flippant piece that lists a hundred or so things that ‘white people like’ but by white people, he means middle class people and/or those striving to impress. The list makes you alternately cringe and laugh out loud: coffee, farmers’ markets, gifted children, Prius cars, renovations, NGOs, having gay/black/other ethnicity friends and so forth. There’s something there for all of us. But while Lander clearly wants to have a dig at political correctness and people trying hard to impress, this is a lightweight book cobbled together quickly from his widely read blog at the behest of a publisher in a big hurry, so you can expect no more than a columnist style wit and depth. Entertaining enough but not worth buying. 2 stars

Started Early, Took My Dog by Kate Atkinson

I’m quite ambivalent about this book. It’s a murder mystery/detective thing that switches between the points of view of several characters and between two periods of time. I was confused about which detective was which from beginning right through to the end. And I also found the main characters fairly unsympathetic at the outset, not really establishing themselves as people I cared about until well into the second half of the book. Some of the characters were really quite irrelevant. So, while I wanted to find the answer to the mystery and finished the book for that reason, I really found it unnecessarily complicated and a bit of a chore. 2 stars