Zoli - Colum McCann

 Let's get serious for a little while.  I had this on my  shelves, chosen, I  expect, because of the cover, although the subject  when I turned the book over was what hooked me ultimately. If you look on Amazon, you will notice that there are about 7 different covers for this book.  Perhaps the publishers just couldn't get it to sell.  Pity.  This is a story that, whilst sad, will inform, will anger, will open your eyes.

Let me first say that whilst this is a fiction, it is based on the life of a Romany/Gypsy singer and poet called Papusza.  Zoli is a real gypsy.  a girl who lives in a caravan drawn by a horse, and her country is Slovakia, her tongue Slovac.    She is orphaned as a small child, by the Hlinkas, the Slavic version of the Nazis.  Look them up.  At six, suddenly, she and her grandfather are all that are left of the family group they travel with.  Travelling at night, keeping away from the Hlinkas, they eventually find and join a group of Roma musicians. The story takes us from the 1930s up until the beginning of the 21st century.  It makes fascinating reading, albeit sometimes very grim indeed.  Because she has a beautiful voice, she falls in with the new "comrades" in Slovakia - those who want everyone to share in everything that is good and for a while she becomes famous.  Just for a while.    A friend of mine is from Roma blood, and this made the book more interesting to me  A fascinating culture, left behind by civilisation, by their own choice.  But then - the bright new comrades of Slovakia think it isn't fair for the Roma to miss out - they will want the heated homes, the proper floors and doors that everyone else is going to get - Won't they?

          

There is a Polish film (2013) called Papusza, using the Polish and the Roma languages, shot in black and white, which is Papusza's story. |If this has interested you, I suggest you read the book and then get hold of the film.  Get as much from this very small but important life - and remember though it was the Nazi party that wanted to rid the world of  Jews and Gypsies.... they were not the only group that wanted that result.

My Name is Leon - Kit de Waal

This is not a book to make the reader smile.  But it does compel the reader to turn the pages, getting

ever more angry with each of them.  If you can, imagine you are 9 years old, with a new baby brother.  You have a black father, he has a white. Your Mum is addicted to prescription drugs, alcohol and is suffering for post natal depression.  Imagine being a carer for that new brother.

 

 Leon loves that little baby very much, and he does what he can.  When his Mum will not get out of bed and the food in the cupboards is gone,  the formula milk for the baby nearly finished, Leon must tell Tina upstairs who has often cared for him.  Things do not go well when Social Services are brought onto the scene, for Leon's Mum needs hospitalisation, and there is no other family.  This is Leon's story.  This is how he learns that even people you love can let you down even when you are sure they are not going to.  This is how he learns that people are not always what they seem.  This is how he learns that loving someone may not be enough.   

 

Set in London, in the year leading up to the wedding of Prince Charles and Diana Spencer, there were dark deeds aplenty, the police were not the police we know today, and somehow, at nine years old, Leon has to find his way in life.   This is an adult read,   but I think many younger adults would get a lot from this.  This was a time I lived in London.  This was a period I remember, and yes, it was a dark time.  But not all of it.  Maybe Leon will find a home and someone he loves.  Maybe..... 

 

 

Mrs Mac Suggests - What To Read in November

Well.... here in the UK the clocks have gone back, so the evenings are dark and long.  Never mind, this means that the woodburner can be lit if it ever gets cold, for the warmth is still with us, and it needs to be chilly before I light that up!

It's November reading then.  And in November, I and several other bookie friends try a "Remembrance" read.  That is to remember WW1 (which officially ended on the 11th day of the 11th month 1918);  or any book set either before and leading up to, or between that war and WW2 - or set in WW2.

You might like that idea, or you might shy away, muttering, "Oh no! - to heavy for me".  So this month I suggest a choice -

                                   War or Not.

Myself?  For War it's going to be a post WW2 novel -  

  A God in Ruins by Kate Atkinson

 and  for Or Not it's going to be a much lighter read -

Campari for Breakfast by Sara Crowe

Enjoy your November reading, whatever it is.

The Buried Giant - Kazuo Ishiguro

It would simplify this book to say that an elderly couple set off across Britain seeking their estranged son in another part of the country.  

But whilst they are the glue that holds it all together, this is a richer, deeper tale.  They are Britons.  This is a dark time.  The Romans are long gone.  King Arthur is dead, and only the elderly (and last) knight of the Round Table, Sir Girwain is left.  His mission is to kill the last dragon in Britain.  There are, of course, others in the country who are not Britons.  They are Saxons, and there is still a fragile peace between the two groups, although there is that feeling that civil war could break out at any time.  Then there's the Saxon warrior on a mission, sent by his lord, and a young boy excluded by his village and taken under the wing of Beatrice and Axl, the elderly couple on their journey.

Add to this mix some fables, the boatman across the River Stix, and a few minor characters, and there you have it.  I wanted to love, love, love this book, and at first, I couldn't stop hugging myself for starting it.  The language is something different - of the time, you might say.  The descriptions, though bare, tell you everything you need to know about living conditions, landscape and people's personal habits.  When the young boy is thinking about a girl he once met, the reason she sticks in his memory is that she did not smell of excrement.  Don't be offended by that, just think about it.  In an age where there was no plumbing, and no soft paper on a roll, there must always have been a little hum around people......

Ultimately, I only liked it.  Maybe my opinion is wrong.  You may read and love every page, but towards the end I found my attention wavering - never a good sign.  It is certainly different, but not as good as I so wanted it to be.

Julius - Daphne Du Maurier

Unusually, I am telling you today about a book I am not sure I liked.  Unusual because (sure, you know this by now, eh?) usually I want to recommend a book I loved, or I at least enjoyed reading.  You also know, dear readers, that I don't talk about crime novels, airport pageturners and the like.  So.  This is none of those, but it is a book with a completely unlikeable lead character (the Julius of the title) and is simply the story of his life.

Starting with a small baby reaching up to the clouds, a baby born to a Jewish father and a non-Jewish mother in the second half of the 1800s, this novel will take you through that baby's entire life.  The poverty he suffers at the start of his life doesn't seem to bother him so much, and eating scraps from the cobbles under his grandfather's market stall just means that he can fill his belly.  Does his life improve?  Well, yes, but not staight away - the Prussians take over Paris, various family members die, and eventually he ends up an orphan in Tangiers where he lives a life of lying, cheating, wheeler dealing, and discovers sex.  But he isn't going to stay in Tangiers.  Not enough for him there.  London beckons, and when he realises that somehow he needs to do something so that he doesn't starve, he takes on a job that may help him to get on in life.

He is simply one of the most unlikeable characters in fiction, I think.  he likes "something for nothing", he is single-minded about the direction his life needs to go, and he loves no-one at all - until his daughter is born.  He's met his match here, because she is also unlikeable.  Forged in her father's image, spoilt, with money, these two are a match made in hell.

No more about the story, because you need to get the flavour yourself.  Finally, I beg you, do not read the Forward until you have finished  the book, or you will have gleaned too much from it.  But do note that Du Maurier was only 26 when she wrote this. 

The Whistling Season - Ivan Doig

Every so often I find a book that makes me evangelical - and here, set in the lonely hugeness that is Montana at the start of the 20th Century is one of those.

Three motherless brothers, a father, and an advertisement in a newspaper from a housekeeper seeking employment headed "Can't Cook, Doesn't Bite".  And there I was, hooked by this wonderful tale of what happens to everyone when the Rose the new housekeeper and her brother arrive on the afternoon train and alight, in the middle of nowhere to start a new life.  Morris, the brother, after a few false starts, is taken on as the school teacher, and Rose whistles her way through the dust and dirt and makes their home clean and loved again - but it's true, she can't and does not cook.  So the lumpy porridge and questionable stews continue to be made by Dad. 

Small fights, big problems, and a mystery.  Children growing into adolescents;  bullies and those who are bullied, and Morris is teaching all of them things that are not on the curriculum but that will fascinate and educate them in a far more important way than ordinary spelling, ordinary arithmetic....... In 1910 the arrival of Haley's Comet in the skies above is something they learn about and want to celebrate

The last couple of chapters will solve the mystery....... and had me putting the book down several times because I didn't want it to end.  And when I at last got to the last lines, it was with a sigh of total enjoyment.  

I was passed this wonderful book by a friend who hoped that I would like it - Oh! I did!, I did! but sadly, when I looked up the author -  who had never come into my sights before, I find that he died in 2015.  I hope he knew before he died that he was a glorious storyteller - and at least there are many books of his for me to look forward to.

Mrs Mac suggests..... a book to read for OCtober

Well, leaves, mellow fruitfulness and all that...... here's October, and I'm sure, on your shelves, there will be

 A book you've not read yet but are saving as a treat.

I always have a few that are appealing to me - you know, the whispered "read me, read me" as you pass them by on the shelf, so I can't believe you don't have some of them too. The darker evenings will soon be upon us, time to light the fire, the woodburner, or turn on the heating.... and what better than to snuggle up with one you really want to read!

This month, for me, it's The Whistling Season by Ivan Doig passed on to me by a booky friend (thanks Jeannine!)