Book Review: Walk the Blue Fields

 By Claire Keegan

• Pub Date: 2017

• Genre: Short Stories

• Where I bought this book: The Bookery, Cincinnati 

• Why I bought this book: I've been grabbing everything I find by this author 

 ******

    A strong collection of ordinary stories about ordinary Irish people going about their daily affairs, accepting their fate with its gloom and loneliness, but always hinting at and hoping for more.

    It's full not of happy-go-lucky folks basking in the glory of the green fields of ole Ireland, but of a melancholy people frustrated by their limitations, squinting up at the sky hoping for a bit of the sun, but enduring the muddy fields and the rain soaking in their shoes.

     Whether they are priest or farmer or soldier or mother, shopper or shopkeeper, Keegan gets inside their hearts and heads, exploring desires amidst exhilarated sadness. She shows lives full of abuse, conflict, and desolation. She pulls no punches, writing her stories with a gift for description and an eye for the pedestrian nature of daily life.

    In the opening story, The Parting Gift, she tells a common tale -- a young woman emigrating to American, not with stars in her eyes, but a hope that no matter what happens there, her life will be better -- or at least different. In Keegan's descriptions, nothing is extraordinary in the girl's preparations, as her mother speaks to her from another room.

                    "You'll have a boiled egg?"

                    "No thanks, Ma."

                    "You'll have something?"

                    "Later on, maybe."

                    "I'll put one on for you."

    It's a scene played out in households throughout Ireland over the years, and Keegan, without sentimentality, captures it perfectly.

    She has honed her craft well. In The Forester's Daughter, she tells of a man and his family trying to do well, but failing miserably, with instances of abuse, cruelty, and neglect taken as a matter of course.

    In the title story, she writes about a priest examining his own life while consecrating the wedding of a well-to-do Irish couple. It's summed up by the priest's thinking that "Anytime promises are made in public, people cry."

Book Review: Glory

  By Noviolet Bulawayo

• Pub Date: 2022

• Where I bought this book: The Book Loft, Columbus, Ohio 

• Why I bought this book: I like fables 

 ******

     I really, really wanted to like to book. Tholukuthi, I wanted to like this book. But it took my slogging through some 325 repetitive pages, with too many words, tholukuthi, and a writing style that carried around too many blending ideas and voices, before I found it.

    It's difficult to say it was worth it. But two parts of the book -- one in which Destiny finds her mother's past of being a victim of violence linked with her own similar history, and a second in the final 70 pages, which featured the hope of butterflies and some extraordinary writing -- made me rethink all the thoughts I had while reading it.

    It's a tale of Zimbabwe, an African country that suffered colonialism and white minority rule before a revolution threw out the white overlords but brought in a murderous, native dictatorship. The persecution and disappearances of the population continued, with the government of Black nationalist  Robert Mugabe becoming increasingly more vicious and corrupt over his 40-year dictatorship.

    This fable shows the country as literal animals -- Mugabe is the Old Horse, whose presence strikes fear and loyalty among the population of goats and chickens and cats and all manner of insects. His army of Defenders are brutal dogs that attack and kill without warning or remorse. The majority animals are poor but loyal to the ruler, wearing his image on their clothing and waving the proper flag of the Country Country.

    All of this mimics the history of the land in the south of Africa, which during colonialism was called Rhodesia -- named after the rich English lord who invaded and declared the area part of Britain. If that's not the most colonial thing ever, I'm not sure what is. After World War II, the rulers declared independence from Britain, and, looking to neighboring South Africa, set up an apartheid-like state.

    The book begins with Old Horse celebrating his 40 years of power, and moves on to the coup that tossed him out and took over his rule. But it is a verbose story, told through a multitude of conflicting and confusing voices. It's often unclear what the animals represent -- someone from the Seat of Power, the Resistance, the Dissidents, the Sisters of the Disappeared, or just random citizens.

    The writing includes repetitive words, phrases, entire sentences. Some chapters, tholukuthi, include long-winded descriptions that go on and on and on and on and on. And there is the use of tholukuthi, a word of African origin that means -- seemingly, whatever the author wants it to mean. It's an interjection, a hallelujah!, a "really, really," an "and so," a "you'll find that," and is used so many times it means all of them, and none of them.

    Bulawayo even uses a social media style to tell the tale. But even there, the streams of Twitter feeds are as disembodied, annoying, and incomprehensible as the real ones.

    When one overdoes a stylistic point, it loses its magic.

    That's what happens here. In the later quarter of the book, the tone changes, becomes more personal, and focuses on a single family of animals, including Destiny and her mother, Simiso. This is where I started enjoying the book, and eagerly read the pages. But the writing still overwhelms the ideas and actions. The repetition and overwriting stand out and get in the way of the story.

    When she writes about the genocide that occurred, it's hard to read -- because it's true. I stuck through the book until the end, and I'm glad I did. It struck a chord in me. It touched me. It taught me something.

    It also showed me what this book could have been.