Book Review: Silence of the Girls

The Silence of the Girls, by Pat Barker

Another Man Booker prize winner, and another fine read.

I enjoy novels that tell a different side of the story. In this case, Barker tell the story of Achilles and the Trojan Way from the perspective of Briseis, a high-ranking woman from Troy whom the Greeks captured and gave to Achilles as a war prize, as a slave.

It can sometimes be confusing to read such a book, as it gives details and tells anecdotes that are new, and sometimes contradictory to the stories you have heard before. But that's the point.

Barker tells it well, in succinct, well-written prose. Briseis' anger, her regret, and her longing for her past life and her family come through loud and clear. She also tells of the women with her, who are living a life as bad or worse than her own. Briseis is unflinching in her disgust at the men and their killing, at the viciousness and thoughtless hatred that fills the rage of Achilles and the other warriors. 

This is Briseis' story, as she explains near the end of the book.

"What will they make of us, the people of those unimaginably distant times? One thing I do know; they won't want the brutal reality of conquest and slavery. They won't want to be told about the massacres of men and boys, the enslavement of women and girls. They won't want to know we are living in a rape camp. No, they'll go for something altogether softer. A love story, perhaps? I just hope they manage to work out who the lovers were. His story. His, not mine. It ends at his grave."

It's a fascinating read that tells the experiences of the captured women, whom no one listens to and no one hears. Silence becomes a woman, says Ajax, one of the Greek fighters. Barker replies with the  sounds of silence.

Review: Washington Black

Washington Black, by Esi Edugyan

If this book has proven one thing, it is to appreciate the Man Booker Prize for selecting some of the finest contemporary fiction available. Whether a novel is on the longlist, shortlist, or is the actual winner -- Washington Black was shortlisted for the 2018 prize -- rest assured it's going to be good.

But Edugyan has shown much more with the powerful and explosive writing in her extraordinary work. Through the title character, Edugyan has shown some of the true horrors of slavery, not just in the routine dehumanization of people of color, but in the lifelong impact it has on its victims. She has shown the depravity of its systemic brutality. She has shown how it allows white people to decry its savagery while simultaneously benefiting from it.

Set in the 19th Century, the book follows George Washington Black, who begins life as a field slave on a plantation in Barbados. It's a cruel, grueling life, and Wash is confused and alarmed when he finds he is assigned to be a manservert to the master's younger brother. He fears he will be assaulted and abused, with no way out, because he is always forced to go along. Even when he finds that Titch -- which his new master insists that Wash call him -- is not the vicious master he feared, he cannot rest easy.

"I thought of my existence ... the brutal hours in the field under the crushing sun, the screams, the casual finality edging every slave's life, as though each day could easily be the last. And that, it seemed to me clearly, was the more obvious anguish -- that life had never belonged to any of us, even when we sought to reclaim it by ending it."

Titch discovers Wash has natural artistic skills, and he encourages his talents. But he does so because he sees a benefit to his own scientific endeavours.

When a tragedy occurs on the plantation, Titch and Wash flee, leading to their adventures through America, Canada, and England. The tale is told in brilliant, colorful, descriptive language.

For instance, later in the book, Wash recalls his experience in the Canadian Arctic.

"I had been warned ... that snow was white, and cold. But it was not white; it held all the colours of the spectrum. It was blue and green and yellow and teal; there were delicate pink tintings in some of the cliffs as we passed. As the light shifted in the sky, so did the snow around us deepen, find new hues, the way an ocean is never blue but some constantly changing colour. Nor was the cold simply cold -- it was the devouring of heat, a complete sucking of warmth from the blood until what remained was the absence of heat." 

It's that writing, showing the melancholy, the bitterness, and the haunted, hunted existence that follows Wash throughout his life, that makes this book worth buying and saving, so one can read it again and again.

Book Review: Skink

Skink: No Surrender, by Carl Hiaasen

Look, it's Carl Hiaasen, writing a Young Adult novel about Skink, a former governor of Florida who has truly gone rogue. What do you expect?

Something short, witty, and easy to read. Something funny, with hi-jinks and bizarre characters. Something in which the good guys prevail, and the bad guys get punished, often in inevitable, outlandish ways.

Check. Check. And check.

Hiaasen is the chronicler of the Florida man. If he didn't create the trope, he certainly spread it into popular culture.

And Skink is the definitive Florida man. A fearless loner, perhaps insane in the popular meaning, and one who doles out his own brand of justice. He's part man, part myth. He's always there, loves children, animals, and nature, and despises those who defile any of them.

In No Surrender, Skink teams with Richard to find the 14-year-old's missing cousin, who has either run away or been kidnapped. Their harrowing but amusing adventures -- well, amusing for us, maybe, if not for them -- get wilder as the story winds its way along the north Florida coast and into the Choctawhatchee River. 

Enjoy it while you can.

Book Review: Troublesome Creek

The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek, by Kim Michele Richardson

About halfway through this intense, thoughtful novel, I had the thought that it may be one of the best books I have ever read.

Then it got better.

So, before I go any further, let me urge you to go out and buy this book. Or borrow it from your local library. Just go read it.

The book explores two issues, one that I was familiar with, and the second I was unaware of but happy to learn about. The book's protagonist, Cussy Mary Carter, is one of the Blue Fugates of Kentucky, mountain people who because of a rare blood condition and much inbreeding, had blue skin.To help survive in the rugged environment of Eastern Kentucky, Cussy joins the Pack Horse Library project, a WPA program that delivered books to the isolated people in the area. (I had heard about the Fugates: I was unaware of the Pack Horse project.)

Martin Fugate moved from France to the Troublesome Creek area of Hazard County, Ky., around 1800. Against all odds, he married a Kentucky woman who carried the same rare recessive gene as he did -- one that lacked a critical enzyme in the blood, causing it to have a chocolate-brown color, which in turn made the skin appear blue. Because of their isolation, members of the family married and had children with each other. This resulted in the recessive gene occurring more frequently, resulting in the condition later identified as methemoglobinemia. (I tried to find a photo of a family member online, but none seemed legitimate. They were either falsely colored, exploitative, or not a member of the Fugate clan.)

President Franklin Roosevelt created the The Pack Horse project as part of the Works Project Administration in 1935. It was meant to bring books to the schools and isolated cabins in Appalachia. It hired mostly women, and a few men, to walk or ride horses or mules across the rugged land. The people receiving the books were grateful for both the visitors and reading material, which they otherwise would do without.

But I digress. Back to the book.

Cussy Mary lives in a two-room cabin in an  almost inaccessible holler near Troublesome Creek. Her only human companion is her father, a coal miner suffering from black-lung disease, who is eager to marry her off before he dies. He is active in the efforts to organize the miners, a dangerous position to take in Hazard County in the 1930s. Cussy is a blue woman, perhaps the last of her kind. She is sometimes called Bluet, because her color resembles a wildflower that grows near her home in the Appalachian mountains.

As fictional characters, Cussy and her father are used to give a primer on the poverty in the Eastern Kentucky mountains, and the effect it has on the people of the area. It shows the devastating impact mining coal has had on the beauty and health of the natural surroundings, and on the community.

It shows the barriers Cussy must face because of her color, her gender, and her isolation. For instance, in one anecdote, she is forced to obey the hastily hung "no coloreds" sign in the restroom of the library room where she picks up the books and magazines for the people along her Pack Horse route. Richardson captures how the books she delivers show how Cussy's world, and the world of her neighbors, is sometimes beyond their ken.

"'Aeroplanes and trains,' I said to Angeline. ... 'The world's getting so big, Bluet. Makes a feller feel too small,' Angeline barely whispered. 'It's growing too fast. Right when you're looking smack at it, but you hain't really seeing it neither. Hain't natural.' She tilted her head down toward the dirt, plugging her toes into the earth as if to root herself from being carried off."

The writing is extraordinary, as the above illustrates. It's vivid and sensitive, filled with descriptive phrases. Richardson reaches perfection in her use of dialect -- just the right amount to give flavor to the speech of the people, but not too much that it appears mocking, is annoying, or hard to understand. Richardson has a keen ear.

She also has a keen heart and mind, pulling us in to watch her characters live their lives, allowing us to feel empathy and a certain kinship, even though their circumstance are far different in time and place to our own. 

Book Review: Ghost Mine

Ghost Mine: by Hunter Shea

This post is part of a blog tour leading up to the publication of the book on May 30. I received a copy of the book for participating in the tour.

Ghost Mine is a scary little book, chock full of weird characters spilling over with wickedness and villainy, evil happenings beyond the imagination of most men, and places of darkness and horror that make your worst nightmares seem like a sunny field of flowers.

It is the fight between good and evil, of men and women against a literal devil, in a battle that could only be conceived in the mind, because it is too horrible to exist in any world we know. Yet there are also good men and women, willing to risk their very souls for others. There is friendship and camaraderie, love and tenderness, and trust and togetherness.

Hunter Shea calls himself the "product of a misspent childhood watching scary movies, reading, and wishing Bigfoot (who receives a mention in Ghost Mine) would walk past his house." He is the author of more than 25 books, including two series. He writes thrillers, horror, the paranormal, and is proud that his books are on display at the International Cryptozoology Museum. 

While I enjoy a good scare as well as the next person, I must admit I was a little leery reading the background and synopsis of this novel. I feared an over-the-top slasher/horror fest.

I was wrong.

What I read was a thoughtful exploration of fear and the afterlife, a look at how terror can exist on another level, and perhaps cross over into our world. It's a look at religion and death, and how we fit them into our existence.

The book, which is set in the early 1900s, during the term of President Theodore Roosevelt, has a small cast of characters. There's Nat Blackburn, an old-time cowboy and mercenarie, who fought with Roosevelt and his Rough Riders. There's Teta, who has ridden and fought alongside Blackburn. 

After a few introductory chapters introducing the characters and setting the stage -- which has Roosevelt sending Blackburn and Teta out west to find out why men, including U.S. troops, are disappearing in the small Wyoming mining town of Hecla. The copper mines were previously booming, and rumors spread that gold was discovered, but then all went quiet. Anyone sent out there never returned.

As the two men visit the area and their adventure begins, Blackburn and Teta eventually come across others who join them in their quest. They all play important roles in the story. Shea gives us no extraneous characters. 

Indeed, it's a tightly written book. Shea gets into a scene, and gets out. As each character is integral to the plot, each word he chooses is perfect for the sentence, and each sentence, paragraph, and chapter is essential to the plot. 

I like a writer who doesn't waste words. Shea is that writer.