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: Mister, Mister

  By Guy Gunaratne

• Pub Date: 2023

• Genre: Literature, Fictional Memoir

• Where I bought this book: Barnes & Nobel, Florence, Ky. 

• Why I bought this book: I liked his first novel about growing up in Birmingham  

 ******

 

   When Yahya Bas, British subject, Islamic poet -- and thus suspected terrorist -- awakes in an isolated jail cell, a policeman is there to take his statement. Bas refuses to say anything. Instead, he cuts out his tongue, preferring to write his story. 

    That is this book.

    It's a memoir, a political statement, a tale of growing up poor and out of place -- both culturally and geographically -- in the West Midlands of England.

    It's a wonderful tale from a poet, a suspected terrorist, and a literary phenom. He's tired of being bullied, suspected, and deceived. 

    "I just want you to listen," he says early in the tale. "I have plenty to say."

    So he writes his story, from his birth to a Muslim family that is only partially his own. His mother is around, but she has mental issues and stays alone in her room. So Yahya is mothered by a group of women, all of whom live in the dilapidate building with his uncle, Sisi Gamal, his teacher, mentor, and sometimes tormentor.

    He winds up attending a Muslim school, where he meets up with a group of friends, exploring Britain's treatment of the world, including his Islamic culture. He is profound, literate, angry. He studies all manner of writings, from the poets of ancient Egypt, Syria, and other parts of the Middle East, to the European scribes of the Middle Ages and onward.

    Soon, Yehya starts writing poetry. It is profane and bitter. He takes the name Al-Bayn, a nod to his culture, an ancient Greek or Celtic name for Britain, and the mystic world of William Blake. He becomes famous in his own community, attracting large crowds and disruptions. The authorities, fearful of his writings and his impact, see him as a threat.

     So he flees and wanders, eventually finding himself in the desert world of his ancestors. In his voluntary exile, he find his own heritage lovely if uncomfortable, difficult if welcoming. He find acceptance, but pushes away, and his return to England is not as voluntary as his leaving. 

    Yet no matter where he goes, he finds himself a nomad, an outsider. He has a lot to say, but he struggles with what it means. We struggle along with him.

Book Review: Not Even Immortality Lasts Forever

Not Even Immortality Lasts Forever: Mostly True Stories, by Ed McClanahan

• Where I bought this book: Kentucky Book Festival, Lexington
• Why I bought this book: McClanahan is Kentucky's best unknown writer

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    I first fell in love with McClanahan's writing soon after I moved to the commonwealth some 40 years ago, and a colleague suggested -- nay, insisted -- that I read The Natural Man, McClanahan's first novel.. 

    I did. I was hooked.

    McClanahan has led an extraorinary 20th Century life. Born in Brooksville, the seat of rural Bracken County, he was a part of the pre-war generation -- too young for World War II, and smart enough and pacifist enough to avoid the Korean War. McClanahan is a contemporary of the legendary Kentucky poet and author, Wendell Berry, along with Pulitzer-prize winner Larry McMurtry and beat/hippie author Ken Kesey. He ran with the Merry Pranksters. He was an author, professor, and lecturer under the moniker, "Captain Kentucky." Along with Mason, Berry, James Baker Hall, and Gurney Norman, McClanahan was part of the group called the "Fab Five" of Kentucky literature.

    In Not Even ..., McClanahan pens a ragtag collection of tales stretching from his boyhood days to his current elderly strolls around Lexington. The result is funny, yet touching, a feeling that you are listening to an old man in the latter years of his life lightheartedly recalling his earlier days of glory. He explores his relationship as the hippie, ne'er-do-well son of an upright, businessman-father who brokers little nonsense and was unusually proud of the cut of his nose.

The nose, my father firmly believed, is composed of certain pliable matter that one can mold and shape over time like a lump of gristly modeing clay, if -- if --one develops the proper habits of life and sticks to them assiduously. Such as: When said olfactory apparatus itches, son, do not scratch same by rubbing it with the heel of your hand as if you want to smear the gaddamn thing all over your counternance. Rather, delicately grasp it between the thumb and forefinger, just below the bridge -- thus; yes; just so -- and gently pull forward and down, thereby addressing the offending itch while simultaneously helping the nose to become all that it can be, which is to say a nose not unlike the paternal beezer itself.

    Some of the stories may be true -- one he claims to have video proof he found on the Internet. Others, like the one above, he admits, might be a teensy bit exagerrated.  There are those he says are true to the best of his recollections. A few, perhaps, might just well be, perhaps, merely allegorical. 

    It's a memoir in the best sense of the term -- self effacing, forgoing sentimentality if he chooses, grumbling about memory loss if it provides a convenient escape hatch.

    It's short, and sweet, and funny as hell. Go read it.

Book Review: The Incomplete Book of Running

The Incomplete Book of Running, by Peter Sagal

Reading this book is kinda like having a guy tap on you the shoulder and say, "let's go for a run." And while you run, he also talks. A lot. He talks like a runner, veering from topic to topic at random. He tells stories happy and sad, discusses his bowel movements, and relates tales from the numerous marathons he had run.

He keeps going on and on, as you pound out the miles. All the while, you're nodding your head, laughing or expressing sorrow at his predicaments.

He's faster than you, but that's OK. He challenges you, but knows instinctively when to slow down so you can catch your breath for a couple of seconds. If you need to walk for a bit, he's more than willing. 

Peter Sagal is the host of the NPR show, Wait, Wait. ... Don't Tell Me. He's also a marathoner, and a pretty good one at that. He has qualified for and ran the Boston Marathon several times, and his personal best time is ... well, I won't tell you that, because it's one of the better stories in the book, and I don't want to ruin it for you.

The book covers a year in Sagal's running life, along with enough personal information to put it all into perspective. He goes backward and forward in time, letting you know how he got into running, how it continued -- more or less  throughout his life -- and how it often kept him centered during the times of trouble.

In short, the book is just like running -- sometimes funny, sometimes heartbreaking, but always inspiring. Runners will see themselves. Non-runners will recognize their running friends.

Book Review: Wine in the Sand

Wine in the Sand, by Jim White

I am generally not a fan of stories of wars or memoirs of soldiers. I never served in the military -- too young for Vietnam, too old for anything else -- and quite frankly didn't miss it. I'm not sure I could have survived. I tend to avoid violence and consider myself mostly a pacifist.

So I looked at this book -- a tale of White's time in the Air Force during Desert Storm -- as a kind of adventure, feeling I could read it with an open mind because I know the guy who wrote it.

And you know what? I liked it.

White is kind yet cocky, laid-back but intense (he once finished an unofficial triple Ironman, with the support of many friends, because he wanted to), friendly, generous, and witty. So is his book.

What I expected from a memoir of war was lots of heroics, ramped-up violence, gung-ho feats of daring-do, cynicism of the highest order. It's none of those -- OK, there is just the teensiest bit of sarcasm -- but instead it's chock full of tales of guys just trying to survive the best way they know how, trying to do an impossible job, and looking for the best in themselves and others.

It's a weird little book: Short chapters (I like; it makes for quick reading), no page numbers (didn't like), strong, explosive writing, and black-and-white Polaroid pictures.

See? I do know the guy.
 And Karen Minzner,
who took the cover photo,
is a great photographer.

White writes of his involvement in the lead up to Desert Storm -- his unit of fire fighters was one of the first sent to Saudi Arabia after Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait. He writes of their survival and new experiences in a strange land. He writes of skirting the edges of military rules and regulations, and of driving hours through the desert to find his true love. The book is mostly one of good times. Even when he gets serious about three-quarters of the way through, he finds the positive.

The absolute fear of dying violently during a SCUD missile attack? Hey, it's just an extended version of the Fourth of July fireworks, with a little homemade wine on the side.

So, about the title. Is it a play on "line in the sand," which President Bush used to defend the initiation of the Gulf War? Or was it used because Wine on the Desert was already taken?

I need to know.

This Week in Books, 1st Edition

Apparently, this is a thing with book bloggers: You write about what books you've just read, are reading, and what you plan to read next. I'm not always that scheduled -- often I just go to my TBR stack and grab what looks interested.

But hey, I'll play along. Maybe I'll make this a permanent feature.

My week in books. 

First off, as one can tell by my latest review, I have just finished, for the second time, Stephen's King's Elevation. As Lawrence Welk would say, "It's wunnerful, wunnerful."

On my current reading list are two books. One is the Pulitzer-prize winning, All the Light We Cannot See, by Anthony Doerr. It's a book set in and before World War II, and contrasts the growing up of a blind French girl and a orphan German boy with a knack for electronics. So far, so good. The second is a Gulf War memoir, Wine in the Sand, by a buddy of mine, Jim White. It's as wild as the war (apparently) was.

As for what comes next, I'm not sure. It might be Music Love Drugs War, by Geraldine Quigly, a novel about growing up in Northern Ireland during the heart of the Troubles in 1980. Or is might be Jasper Fforde's latest, Early Riser, about a human society that hibernates in winter. Bonus for me: I am going to see Fforde speak and sign my book at Left Bank Books in St. Louis next week. Yippee!!