Book Review: 1666

  By Lora Chilton

• Pub Date: 2023

• Genre: Historical fiction

• Where I bought this book: Joseph-Beth Bookstore, Lexington, during the Kentucky Book Fair 

• Why I bought this book: The author talked me into it  

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    The thing you have to understand about this book, and what affected me the most, is that these were real people who survived the horrors within.

    The PaTow'O'Mek tribe of what is now called Virginia actually existed, and because of the people written about and their descendants, exist again. That is no small thing, considering how America was built on the wanton destruction of the native people and their lifestyles.

    The novel begins with the tribe living in a time of change, when the Strangers have come and expressed an intent to take the land, regardless of the desires of the current inhabitants. Several tribes live on the land, with similar lifestyles but with shifting interests and coalitions. The Strangers take advantage, and with superior weaponry and numbers (not to mention the diseases they bring), take what they want.

    In doing so, they massacre all the male members of the PaTow'O'Mek tribe -- now known as the Patawomeck. They capture the women and children they don't kill, and sell them into slavery in the sugar fields of Barbados.

    The survival story is told in alternating chapters through two women who lived through the massacre and whom we meet again aboard the slave ships. Ah'SaWei and Xo, tribal friends, are split up when they arrived. Xo has the harder enslavement of the two, being regularly subjected to rapes and beatings. Ah'SaWei's enslaver is a Quaker, who is less vicious in the treatment of the people he enslaved.

    Several parts are particularly difficult to read, as the author spares little in documenting the violence inflicted on those who were kidnapped and enslaved. But it's necessary to lay it all out, as it explores the inhumanity of the original colonists, and the suffering of those whose lives and lifestyles were uprooted and destroyed.

    Chilton, the author, is a member of the tribe, and she interviewed tribal elders, studied the language, and researched documents from the colonial era and beyond to put together the tale. It's quite an amazing work that reads like literary history, and marks the trauma, pain, sadness, and eventually triumph.

Book Review: Thirteen Ways of Looking

  By Colum McCann

• Pub Date: 2015

• Where I bought this book: Roebling Books, Covington, Ky. 

• Why I bought this book: I love me a good collection of Irish short stories. 

 *****

 

  I am sad that I was generally disappointed in this collection of a novella and three short stories. I have liked several of the author's previous works.

    OK. The stories themselves were decent. The last one, Treaty, about a aging Catholic nun who comes face-to-face with her living nightmare, was thoughtful and compelling. But that one suffered from a flaw the others were far more guilty of, and unexpected from such an accomplished writer: A general lack of focus, using too many words, too much excess description, too much meaningless detail and too many strained metaphors  

    But let's start with the good. Treaty involves Sister Beverly, a nun living in a care home in Long Island, concerned about her health and wondering if her religious life has been a waste. She's forgetful, ill at ease, and unable to feel comfortable in her old age. Then on the television, she sees a man who looks very much like an older version of person who raped her a long time ago. 

    The story deals with perception, pain, horror, and regret. She relives her pain, but does not want to dwell on it as the defining point of her life. Would God want her to reveal the monster -- if that is what he is -- or forgive his actions? Her thoughts and behaviors are deeply compelling, and McCann's tale paints a masterful image.

    Contrast that to the main story, about Peter J. Mendelssohn,  an aging white guy, an immigrant, a Jew, a lawyer, and a former judge in Brooklyn. He's retired, and now living -- and dying -- in a fancy apartment on the Upper East Side. He's had a good life, despite an upbringing in anti-Semitic Europe. But now his days are all about his pains, his diminished capacity, his beloved but now dead wife, and his terse relationship with his egotistical son. 

    But unlike Sister Beverly, his story is not about reflection and regret. It's about him, his thoughts, and his dying. And, quite frankly, his life and story are not all that interesting for the amount of effort it takes to read about it.

    The other two stories, Sh'khol, and What Time is it Now, Where are You? also fall flat.