Rebeccanyc Reads in 2013, Part 6 -- Until the End of the Year!

* means a favorite read

Books I'm Reading Now



Read in December
110. The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas*
109. The Adventures and Misadventures of Maqroll by Álvaro Mutis*
108. 1941: The Year That Keeps Returning by Slavko Goldstein*
107. The Red Road by Denise Mina
106. The Unknown Masterpiece, and Gambara by Honoré de Balzac
105. Open Door by Iosi Havilio
104. Scars by Juan José Saer
103. Deep Rivers by José Maria Arguedas

Read in November
102. The Missing Year of Juan Salvatierra by Pedro Mairal
101. The Masterpiece by Émile Zola
100. Treasure Hunt by Andrea Camilleri
99. Backlands: The Canudos Campaign by Euclides da Cunha
98. Maíra by Darcy Ribeiro

Read on Previous Threads

Read in November
97. The Penguin Book of Ghost Stories: From Elizabeth Gaskell to Ambrose Bierce edited by Michael Newton
96. Gods and Beasts by Denise Mina
95. The Hare by César Aira
94. Freud by Jonathan Lear
93. Where There's Love, There's Hate by Adolfo Bioy Casares and Silvina Ocampo*
92. A House in the Country by José Donoso*

Read in October
91. The African by J.-M. G. Le Clézio*
90. The End of the Wasp Season by Denise Mina
89. Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter by Mario Vargas Llosa*
88. Resolution by Denise Mina
87. A Dead Man's Memoir by Mikhail Bulgakov
86. The Broken Road: From the Iron Gates to Mount Athos by Patrick Leigh Fermor
85. Oil on Water by Helon Habila
84. Exile by Denise Mina
83. La Reine Margot by Alexandre Dumas

Read in September
82. Case Closed by Patrik Ouředník
81. Garnethill by Denise Mina
80. Midnight in Peking: How the Murder of a Young Englishwoman Haunted the Last Days of Old China by Paul French
79. Blue White Red by Alain Mabanckou
78. Still Midnight by Denise Mina
77. L'Amour by Marguerite Duras
76. Onitsha by J. M. G. le Clezio*
75. Breaking the Maya Code by Michael D. Coe
74. Red Spectres: Russian Gothic Tales from the Twentieth Century edited by Muireann Maguire
73. 419 by Will Ferguson
72. Rue du Retour by Abdellatif Laâbi
71. Broken Glass by Alain Mabanckou
from previous thread
70. The Laughing Man by Victor Hugo*

Read in August
69. The Bridge of Beyond by Simone Schwarz-Bart*
68. Morality Play by Barry Unsworth*
67. Where'd You Go, Bernadette? by Maria Semple
66. The Bottom of the Jar by Abdellatif Laâbi
65. Memoirs of a Porcupine by Alain Mabanckou*
64. Archangel: Fiction by Andrea Barrett
63. Xala by Sembène Ousmane
62. Murther & Walking Spirits by Robertson Davies
61. Kristin Lavransdatter by Sigrid Undset*
60. Dersu the Trapper by V. K. Arseniev*
59. Lost Girls: An Unsolved American Mystery by Robert Kolker
58. Who Owns the Future? by Jaron Lanier

Read in July
57. The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories by Angela Carter
56. The Examined Life: How We Lose and Find Ourselves by Stephen Grosz
55. Ambiguous Adventure by Cheikh Hamidou Kane
54. The Lost Art of Finding Our Way by John Edward Huth
53. Hangsaman by Shirley Jackson
52. The Greenlanders by Jane Smiley*
51. The Belly of Paris by Émile Zola
50. The Seven Solitudes of Lorsa Lopez by Sony Lab'ou Tansi

Read in June
49. A Child of All Nations by Pramoedya Ananta Toer
48. Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar by Simon Sebag Montefiore
47. The Riddle of the Labyrinth: The Quest to Crack an Ancient Code by Margalit Fox*
46. Reticence by Jean-Philippe Toussaint
45. Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy
44. This Earth of Mankind by Pramoedya Ananta Toer
43. Sister Bernadette's Barking Dog: The Quirky History and Lost Art of Diagramming Sentences by Kitty Burns Florey*

Read in May
42. Lucifer Unemployed by Aleksander Wat
41. A Priest in the House (The Conquest of Plassans) by Émile Zola
40. Surrender on Demand by Varian Fry*
39. The Sorrow of War by Bảo Ninh*
38. Transit by Anna Seghers*
37. Slammerkin by Emma Donoghue
36. The Dance of the Seagull by Andrea Camilleri
35. Alien Hearts by Guy de Maupassant
34. To Say Nothing of the Dog: or How We Found the Bishop's Bird Stump at Last by Connie Willis*
33. Astragal by Albertine Sarrazin*

Read in April
32. The Sin of Father Mouret by Émile Zola
31. An Armenian Sketchbook by Vassily Grossman*
30. Dead Souls by Nikolai Gogol*
29. Pieces of Light: How the New Science of Memory Illuminates the Stories we Tell about Our Pasts by Charles Fernyhough
28. Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K. Jerome
27. The Necklace and Other Tales by Guy de Maupassant*
26. Smile As They Bow by Nu Nu Yi
25. The Issa Valley by Czeslaw Milosz*
24. It Was a Long Time Ago, and It Never Happened Anyway: Russia and the Communist Past by David Satter

Read in March
23. The Day of the Owl by Leonardo Sciascia
22. To Each His Own by Leonardo Sciascia*
21. Equal Danger by Leonardo Sciascia
20. War and War by László Krasznahorkai*
19. The Opportune Moment, 1855 by Patrik Ouřednik*
18. The Orientalist: Solving the Mystery of a Strange and Dangerous Life by Tom Reiss*
17. Laughable Loves by Milan Kundera
16. A Harlot High and Low by Honoré de Balzac
15. News from Heaven by Jennifer Haigh
14. Lost Illusions by Honoré de Balzac*

Read in February
13. Jonathan Wild by Henry Fielding
Read on Previous Thread
12. The City Builder by George Konrád
11. Young Stalin by Simon Sebag Montefiore*
10. Old Man Goriot by Honoré de Balzac
9. The Ladies' Paradise by Émile Zola
8. Explosion in a Cathedral by Alejo Carpentier*

Read in January
7. Doomsday Book by Connie Willis
6. Bring Up the Bodies by Hilary Mantel*
5. My Century by Alexander Wat*
4. Kornél Esti by Dezsõ Kosztolányi
3. The Toilers of the Sea by Victor Hugo*
2. The Black Count: Glory, Revolution, Betrayal and the Real Count of Monte Cristo by Tom Reiss*
1. Pot Luck by Emile Zola

Books Recommended by Others
(Idea for this stolen from Deebee's thread)

The Pursuit of the Millennium by Norman Cohn Recommended by SassyLassy Bought 1/9
Religion and the Decline of Magic by Keith Thomas Recommended by dmsteyn Bought 1/9
Forged: Why Fakes are the Great Art of Our Age by Jonathon Keats Recommended by RidgewayGirl
The Recognitions by William Gaddis Recommended by EnriqueFreeque
The Embarrassment of Riches by Simon Schama Recommended by deebee Bought 4/2
The Song of Everlasting Sorrow by Wang Anyi Recommended by steven03tx
Sister Bernadette's Barking Dog by Kitty Burns Florey Recommended by detailmuse Bought 5/29/13
Country of My Skull by Antjie Krog Recommended bymkboylan
Arabian Sands and The Marsh Arabs by Wilfred Thesiger Recommended by Linda92007
The Issa Valley by Czeslaw Milosz Recommended by Lisa/labfs39 Bought 2/15
Slouching Towards Bethlehem by Joan Didion Recommended by MJ/detailmuse and SassyLassy
The Tuner of Silences by Mia Couto Recommended by Lois/avaland Gift from Lois
The Fall of the Roman Empire: A New History by Peter Heather Recommended by deebee Bought 8/22
The Universe Within: Discovering the Common History of Rocks, Planets, and People by Neil Shubin Recommended by detailmuse
Seven Days in the Art World by Sarah Thornton Recommended by RidgewayGirl
Bailout: An Inside Account of How Washington Abandoned Main Street While Rescuing Wall Street by Neil Barofsky Recommended by Chris/cabegley
Color Me English by Caryl Phillips Recommended by Linda92007
Brodeck, Monsieur Linh and His Child, and Grey Souls by Phillipe Claudel Recommended by Lisa/labfs39
Odessa: Genius and Death in a City of Dreams by Charles King Recommended by Cyrel/torontoc Bought 5/10
Freud (The Routledge Philosophers) by Jonathan Lear Recommended by Dewald/dmsteyn Bought 6/6/13
The Wandering Jews by Joseph Roth Recommended by SassyLassy Bought 5/10
The Czar's Madman by Jaan Kross Recommended by SassyLassy
Imperium (recommended by SassyLassy) and Shah of Shahs (recommended by Cyrel/torontoc) by Ryszard Kapuściński
The Country of the Blind and other stories by H.G. Wells Recommended by Barry/baswood Bought 6/6
Rough-Hewn Land: A Geologic Journey from California to the Rocky Mountains by Keith Heyer Mehldahl Recommended by stretch/Kevin
Resistance a Woman's Journal of Struggle and Defiance in Occupied France by Agnes Humbert Recommended by Merrikay/mkboylan
Outwitting the Gestapo by Lucie Aubrac Recommended by Merrikay/mkboylan
The Exile Book of Yiddish Women Writers and Found Treasures edited by Frieda Johles Forman Recommended by Cyrel/torontoc
Writers on Writing by The New York Times Recommended my MJ/detailmuse Bought 7/24
The Bloody Chamber by Angela Carter Recommended by Edwin Bought 7/16
Mao's Last Revolution by Roderick MacFarquhar and Michael Schoenhals Recommended by Edwin
The Women's War by Alexandre Dumas Recommended by SassyLassy Bought 7/24
Lost Classics edited by Michael Ondaatje Recommended by Wandering_StarAlready own this!
Island of the Lost: Shipwrecked at the Edge of the World by Joan Druett Recommended by Colleen/NanaCC Bought 8/7/13
419 by Will Ferguson Recommended by Steven Bought 9/10/13
Morality Play by Barry Unsworth Recommended by Barry/baswood Bought 8/12/13
The Johnstown Flood by David McCullough Recommended by Colleen/NanaCC
Tono-Bungay by H.G. Wells Recommended by Steven Bought 10/12/13
A Book of Silence by Sara Maitland Recommended by WanderingStar Bought 10/28/13
The Informant by Kurt Eichenwald Recommended by Deborah/arubabookwoman
Jewish Journeys by Jeremy Leigh Recommended by Paul/Polaris
In Europe by Geert Mak Recommended by RidgewayGirl Bought 12/7/13
My War Gone By, I Miss It So by Anthony Lloyd Recommended by Paul/Polaris

List by country of books read in 2013 (i.e., country of author)

Africa

Congo
Blue White Red by Alain Mabanckou
Broken Glass by Alain Mabanckou
Memoirs of a Porcupine by Alain Mabanckou
The Seven Solitudes of Lorsa Lopez by Sony Lab'ou Tansi

Nigeria
Oil on Water by Helon Habila

Senegal
Xala by Sembène Ousmane
Ambiguous Adventure by Cheikh Hamidou Kane

Asia

Burma/Myanmar
Smile As They Bow by Nu Nu Yi

Indonesia
A Child of All Nations by Pramoedya Ananta Toer
This Earth of Mankind by Pramoedya Ananta Toer

Vietnam
The Sorrow of War by Bảo Ninh

Central America (and Mexico) and the Caribbean
The Bridge of Beyond by Simone Schwarz-Bart (Guadeloupe)
Explosion in a Cathedral by Alejo Carpentier (Cuba)

Europe

Belgium
Reticence by Jean-Philippe Toussaint

Czechoslovakia and the Czech Republic
Case Closed by Patrik Ouředník
The Opportune Moment, 1855 by Patrik Ouřednik
Laughable Loves by Milan Kundera

England and the UK
Fiction
The Penguin Book of Ghost Stories: From Elizabeth Gaskell to Ambrose Bierce edited by Michael Newton
7books by Denise Mina
Morality Play by Barry Unsworth
The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories by Angela Carter
Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy
Slammerkin by Emma Donoghue
Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K. Jerome
Jonathan Wild by Henry Fielding
Bring Up the Bodies by Hilary Mantel

Nonfiction
The Broken Road: From the Iron Gates to Mount Athos by Patrick Leigh Fermor
Midnight in Peking: How the Murder of a Young Englishwoman Haunted the Last Days of Old China by Paul French
The Examined Life: How We Lose and Find Ourselves by Stephen Grosz
Pieces of Light: How the New Science of Memory Illuminates the Stories we Tell about Our Pasts by Charles Fernyhough
Young Stalin by Simon Sebag Montefiore
Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar by Simon Sebag Montefiore

France
The Unknown Masterpiece, and Gambara by Honoré de Balzac
The Masterpiece by Émile Zola
The African by J.-M. G. Le Clézio
La Reine Margot by Alexandre Dumas
L'Amour by Marguerite Duras
Onitsha by J.M.G. Le Clezio
The Laughing Man by Victor Hugo
The Belly of Paris by Émile Zola
A Priest in the House (The Conquest of Plassans) by Émile Zola
Alien Hearts by Guy de Maupassant
Astragal by Albertine Sarrazin
The Sin of Father Mouret by Émile Zola
The Necklace and Other Tales by Guy de Maupassant
A Harlot High and Low by Honoré de Balzac
Lost Illusions by Honoré de Balzac
Old Man Goriot by Honoré de Balzac
The Ladies' Paradise by Émile Zola
The Toilers of the Sea by Victor Hugo
Pot Luck by Emile Zola

Germany
Transit by Anna Seghers*

Hungary
War and War by László Krasznahorkai
The City Builder by George Konrád
Kornél Esti by Dezsõ Kosztolányi

Italy
Treasure Hunt by Andrea Camilleri
The Dance of the Seagull by Andrea Camilleri
The Day of the Owl by Leonardo Sciascia
To Each His Own by Leonardo Sciascia
Equal Danger by Leonardo Sciascia

Norway
Kristin Lavransdatter by Sigrid Undset*

Poland
Lucifer Unemployed by Aleksander Wat
The Issa Valley by Czeslaw Milosz
My Century by Aleksander Wat

Russia/Soviet Union
A Dead Man's Memoir by Mikhail Bulgakov
Red Spectres edited by Muireann Maguire
Dersu the Trapper by V. K. Arseniev
An Armenian Sketchbook by Vassily Grossman
Dead Souls by Nikolai Gogol

Yugoslavia and the Countries It Broke Up Into
1941: The Year That Keeps Returning by Slavko Goldstein

Middle East and North Africa

Morocco
Rue du Retour by Abdellatif Laâbi
The Bottom of the Jar by Abdellatif Laâbi

South America

Argentina
Open Door by Iosi Havilio
Scars by Juan José Saer
The Missing Year of Juan Salvatierra by Pedro Mairal
The Hare by César Aira
Where There's Love, There's Hate by Adolfo Bioy Casares and Silvina Ocampo

Brazil
Backlands: The Canudos Campaign by Euclides da Cunha
Maíra by Darcy Ribeiro

Chile
A House in the Country by José Donoso

Colombia
The Adventures and Misadventures of Maqroll by Álvaro Mutis

Peru
Deep Rivers by José Maria Arguedas
Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter by Mario Vargas Llosa

US and Canada

USA
Fiction
Where'd You Go, Bernadette? by Maria Semple
Archangel: Fiction by Andrea Barrett
To Say Nothing of the Dog: or How We Found the Bishop's Bird Stump at Last by Connie Willis
Hangsaman by Shirley Jackson
The Greenlanders by Jane Smiley
Doomsday Book by Connie Willis
News from Heaven by Jennifer Haigh

Nonfiction
Freud by Jonathan Lear
Breaking the Maya Code by Michael D. Coe
Lost Girls: An Unsolved American Mystery by Robert Kolker
Who Owns the Future? by Jaron Lanier
The Lost Art of Finding Our Way by John Edward Huth
The Riddle of the Labyrinth: The Quest to Crack an Ancient Code by Margalit Fox
Sister Bernadette's Barking Dog: The Quirky History and Lost Art of Diagramming Sentences by Kitty Burns Florey
Surrender on Demand by Varian Fry
It Was a Long Time Ago, and It Never Happened Anyway: Russia and the Communist Past by David Satter
The Orientalist: Solving the Mystery of a Strange and Dangerous Life by Tom Reiss
The Black Count: Glory, Revolution, Betrayal, and the Real Count of Monte Cristo by Tom Reiss

Canada
419 by Will Ferguson
Murther & Walking Spirits by Robertson Davies

98. Maíra by Darcy Ribeiro



This novel by a Brazilian anthropologist was a challenging read for me: at times fascinating and imaginative, at times frustrating and opaque. Ribeiro set himself the task of depicting fictionally the impact of western "civilization" on a remote tribe of Indians, the Mairun, deep in the forested regions of the Amazon. To do so, he mixes sections that tell of the Mairun origin myths and customs with stories told by people as varied as a Mairun who almost became a Roman Catholic priest, the Mairun guide of souls, other Mairuns, various missionaries, a half-Mairun river trader, an investigator, and others, and it was sometimes difficult to keep track of who was who.

The novel begins with the discovery of a dead white woman on the beach by the river, who has apparently died while giving birth to twins. Or was she murdered? By the end of the book, we have some idea of how she got there. She was a troubled young woman, Alma, who ended up on the same small plane as the Mairun man who had given up studying in Rome to be a priest and was returning home: Isías in his Western name, Avá in his Mairun name. As a Mairun, he is destined to become the next chieftain; the old one has just died (although apparently he didn't know this when he decided to leave Rome and return home). Alma ends up accompanying Isías/Avá by canoe down the river first to the monastery/convent where he originally studied as she had thought she would somehow help the nuns there, and then to his village. Needless to say, she is a curiosity there, but eventually she feels very at home; Isías/Avá has more difficulty fitting back in as he has become neither white nor Mairun.

This is the broadest outline of the plot, but the plot is just there to hang the ideas on. A lot of this book is about religion, both Mairun beliefs and Catholic and evangelical Protestant beliefs, and some of this, especially the Catholic material was hard for me to follow, especially since a lot of it was given in Latin and I didn't want to type it all in to Google Translate! The novel's sections are named largely with Christian concepts: Antiphony, Homily, Gospel, and Corpus. I feel I missed a lot of the Christian references and ideas.

On the other hand, the parts about the Mairun life and mythology were the richest and most compelling, and often beautifully written (and often quite earthy too), although occasionally I was very aware that an anthropologist was writing the book! (As far as I can tell, the Mairun are a made-up tribe, but I'm sure Ribeiro took ideas about customs, kinship, and origin myths from indigenous people he had studied.) I was quite taken with the guide of souls, the complex way the Mairun organize their intergroup relationships, and various individuals and their interactions.

Another aspect of the novel is how Isías/Avá attempts to reclaim his Mairun heritage but remains a prisoner in a way of all his years with the priests both in Brazil and in Rome. His struggle is a metaphor for one of the ways the indigenous cultures were destroyed; more overt methods make an appearance later on in the book.

This is a complex and complicated novel, and I don't feel it entirely works. But I am glad I read it, and I'm still thinking about it.

As a side note, I bought this book because I became interested in Aventura: The Vintage Library of Contemporary World literature, after reading Donoso's A House in the Country earlier this month (see this post in my previous thread); I had never heard of it before. These books are beautifully designed and printed on very nice paper, but this book at least was marred by careless proofreading (e.g., "wit" for "with").

Well hello new thread!

Ahh, fresh new page. Nice!

Oh dear, new page = new wishlisted books for us!

Very funny, Sassy, and thanks for visiting, Merrikay and Vivienne.

99. Backlands: The Canudos Campaign by Euclides da Cunha



I've wanted to read this book ever since I read The War at the End of the World because Vargas Llosa took the story told here, of the war between the followers of a charismatic religious leader in the backlands of northern Brazil and the army of the relatively young Brazilian republic, as the starting point of his novel. Da Cunha, a journalist who had been in the army himself, was what we now would call "embedded" with the army at the very end of the multi-campaign war; the rest of this lengthy and at times overblown book is the result of his detailed research although, in the fashion of the time (?), none of his sources are credited or footnoted.

For the book is not just about the war; nearly half of it paints a portrait of the backlands, or sertão, from a variety of perspectives: geological, meteorological, botanical, and human. And it is when da Cunha gets into the human makeup of the backlands that he gets into trouble with a modern reader, for da Cunha's "scientific" racism is vile. He ranks the races "evolutionarily" (guess which one is most evolved!) and describes in detail the various mixtures of black, white, and Indian blood, each of which has its own name. I suppose in some ways this "scientific" perspective was a step up from thinking of people of color as animals, and certainly it has to be taken in the context of the time, but it's pretty hard to read. Da Cunha also dabbles in psychology.

On the other hand, the geology and natural history of the region were fascinating: the backlands are incredibly rugged, remote, desolate, and alternately mountainous and desert-like. I did feel that his geological writing cried out for maps, and I've spent a lot of time searching the web, without success, for photos that do justice to the dramatic nature of the mountains da Cunha describes, as well as for photos of the plants. These sections did seem a little endless, especially without illustrations and maps.

The second part of the book covers the Brazilian army's four campaigns against Antonio Conselheiro (the counselor) who, through his preaching, attracted thousands of the poor and outcast (for various reasons) to the town of Canudos and built a religious community there. Da Cunha attempts to figure out Conselheiro's psychology, and he covers some of the reasons the powers-that-be in Brazil were so outraged by what might seem to be a localized cult, including that Brazil had only recently become a republic and had to be constantly on the lookout for monarchist rebellions. He calls the Canudos "rebellion" as "our Vendée," referring to the monarchist challenge to the French revolution. The material on the movements of the different units of the armies arrayed against Canudos also cries out for maps.

Militarily, the Brazilian army committed one mistake after another, including expecting regular army units to know what to do about guerrilla warfare, underestimating the impact of the terrain on their ability to proceed and to avoid their enemy, getting separated from their supply train, not having enough supplies, letting the enemy capture their weapons and ammunition, and on and on. Da Cunha develops a grudging respect for the jagunços, a term used to refer to the inhabitants of the backlands that can also mean "outlaw" or "cowboy," for their courage, determination, and persistence. He largely credits the eventual success of the Brazilian army, after three failed and one faltering attempt to take the town of Canudos, to an officer named de Bittencourt who finally got their supply trains in order and could regularly supply the troops at the front with food and ammunition. Eventually, the army was able to almost encircle Canudos, bomb the buildings with cannon fire which often set fire to them, and starve the remaining jagunços out, although they continued to fight fiercely until the very end. Except for some prisoners that the army had taken earlier, almost entirely women and children, everyone in Canudos died, often horribly. Atrocities were widespread. Conselheiro himself died of dysentery in the last days of the siege; his body was exhumed by the army and there are pictures of it available on the internet.

In his introduction to my edition, Ilan Stavans says that this book is a classic of Brazilian literature and gave Brazilians a sense of themselves as a people. It was something of a slog at times, but I'm glad I read it. It's given me renewed appreciation for what Vargas Llosa accomplished in The War at the End of the World, and may inspire me to reread it.

100. Treasure Hunt by Andrea Camilleri



What can I say about yet another Inspector Montalbano mystery except that I eagerly await the next one to be translated into English! This one is a little darker than some, and considerably more gruesome than some, and if truth be told I figured out one part of it before Montalbano did. But all in all, it's always a treat to meet the regular characters again and to share Montalbano's meals and detecting.

Treasure Hunt sounds good. I will need to check out this series.

They're great, Colleen, but you should definitely start at the beginning with The Shape of Water because part of their charm is the cast of continuing characters.

100 up, well done Rebecca.

I must try one of those Camilleri stories, because I love the TV show. Should I start at the beginning or do you have a recommendation.

Excellent reviews of both Backlands: The Canudos campaign and Maira, two books that I will probably never read, but I enjoyed your reviews.

What?? I didn't know there was a Camilleri tv show. We must not get it here or I would have heard of it.

Vivienne, The Inspector Montalbano T V series is made by the Italian channel Rai Uno. It is broadcast on English TV with subtitles.

Alas, however, they do not show it in the US and Netflix doesn't have the DVDs. I think you can buy they from Amazon, but I'm too cheap to do that.

Barry, I would start at the beginning so you can see the characters develop, but since you've watched the show you already know who everybody is, so you could really start anywhere.

Like you, when I read The War of the End of the World I was fascinated by the setting and events and wanted to learn more. I may give Cunha's book a try at some point. In the meantime your review endorses Vargas Llosa's account of the war for me.

Congratulations on reaching 100.

Cunha's Backlands sounds fascinating, if one can get through it. You have left me interested in both this and the the Vargas Llosa.

Just catching up with several of your reviews, always a pleasure and a lesson - here on South American literature. Also I added Freud to my wishlist.

I'm going to put this Cunha on my wishlist too - but not sure whether I could read it...

Thanks, Steven and Dan!

101. The Masterpiece by Émile Zola



In this volume of the Rougon-Macquart cycle, Zola explores the Parisian art world and artistic creativity, principally that of the protagonist, painter Claude Lantier, but also that of other painters, sculptors, journalists, and even a writer loosely based on Zola himself. Lantier is a son of Gervaise, the force of nature from L'assommoir, but was sent back to Plassans to go to school. His friendship with Sandoz (the Zola figure) and Dubuche (who becomes an architect) dates from those years, when the three of them walked for hours and even days over the Provençal landscape, dreaming of coming to Paris and revolutionizing the art world. (This really happened with Zola and Cezanne and a man called Baptistin Baille, who Wikipedia tells me became a professor of science; more on Cezanne later.)

There is a lot about the politics of the art world in this novel, including how various dealers operate. The famous Salon des Refusés of 1863, when works rejected by the official Paris Salon for its exhibition were shown in an annex by the decree of the emperor, is a highlight early in the book. Manet exhibited his "Déjeuner sur l'herbe" there, and in the novel Lantier exhibits a painting similar in some ways called "Plein air"; it is roundly jeered. Nonetheless, his "plein air" ideas are eventually copied by other artists. Later in the novel, the description of the politics of selecting pictures for the annual Salon becomes much more pointed.

The novel follows the arc of Lantier's career starting with his early days in Paris and focuses a great deal on his obsession with painting, with working every hour of the day, with being blind and deaf to interruptions, and on his artistic theories about being realistic, using natural light from the outdoors, and much more. Observing the paintings in the Salon des Refusés exhibit, Lantier muses:

"Some of the efforts were clumsy, inevitably, and some were childish, but the general tone was admirable and so was the light, a fine, silvery, diffused light with all the sparkle of open air! It was like a window thrown open on all the drab concoctions and the stewing juices of tradition, letting the sun pour in until the walls were as gay as a morning in spring, and the clear light of his own picture, the blue effect that had caused so much amusement, shone out brighter than all the rest. This was surely the long-awaited dawn, the new day breaking on the world of art!" p. 122

Later Lantier gets involved with a woman, Christine; they move to the country for some years and have a son who has some ill-defined health and mental problems. While they are happy there for some time, the siren call of Paris, his friends, and the art world lure Lantier back. He becomes even more obsessed with his work, eventually starting a huge project, the "masterpiece" of the title, that he works on for years and years, never quite getting it the way he wants it. Christine, who adores Lantier, is jealous of his painting and tries to get him to pay more attention to her and the son. Eventually, the plot becomes a little melodramatic.

The stories of Sandoz and some of the other creative people in the novel provide a counterpoint to Lantier's story. Some are successful, some sell out, some fail. Not surprisingly, Sandoz comes off very well; although he too is obsessed with his writing, he has a more well rounded life than Lantier, marrying a woman who seems delightful and hosting regular Thursday night dinners for his friends, dinners that become more elaborate as his novels begin to sell. Like Zola himself, he is writing a cycle of novels with a purpose:

"Look. The idea is to study man as he really is. Not this metaphysical marionette they've made us believe he is, but the physiological human being, determined by his surroundings, motivated by the functioning of his organs . . . That's the point we start from, the only possible basis for our modern revolution. The inevitable death of the old conception of society and the birth of a new society, and that means a new art is bound to spring up in a new ground . . . Oh, that's bound to happen! A new literature for the coming century of science and democracy!" p. 154

In this book, Zola describes the scenery of Paris in a painterly manner; it is filled with light and visual imagery to a degree I don't recall from works of his I've read earlier. There are also funny parts, and earthy parts, but a lot of the novel is sad and even horrifying as the reader sees Lantier's obsession taking hold of him in an unproductive and unhealthy way; since he comes from the Macquart side of the family, the reader expects some self-destructive tendency to become apparent.

Now to the controversy. Zola sent a copy of the book to his friend Cezanne, who then never spoke to him again. According to the introduction to my Oxford World's Classics edition, Zola based some personal characteristics on Cezanne, others on Manet, and of course made others up. But this was much talked about back in the day.

This was not my favorite of Zola's novels -- parts of it moved slowly and parts were melodramatic -- but the ins and outs of the art world were fascinating and so was the portrait of Paris.

It may not be his best, but you had me at "Salon des Refusés." Guess I'll be reading some Zola in 2014.

I was away from LT for a week and missed so much. You are reading up a storm! I'm glad to hear that you still prefer Germinal out of all the Zola you have read (how many now?), as I have only read two: Germinal, which I loved, and Nana.

Although The War at the End of the World has been on my wishlist for a while now, I am feeling more urgency than ever after your review of Backlands.

Another fascinating review of a book from Zola's Rougon-Macquart cycle. The details about the art world sound very interesting especially when you know that Zola's book seems to have caused some deep offence.

Nice review of The Masterpiece, Rebecca.

RG, I could have sworn I posted a message replying to your #22, but I guess I'm imagining it. What I meant to say was that even a not-so-good Zola is better than a lot of other books, and I know that you're interested in books about art.

Lisa, I was in a bit of a book slump for a while, but I have been reading more lately. More time on the subway I guess. I think you will really like The War at the End of the World but it is a tome and requires careful reading, so you will need time for it.

Thanks, Barry and Darryl.

102. The Missing Year of Juan Salvatierra by Pedro Mairal



I really liked the central idea of this book -- a painting created over the course of 60 years on rolls of canvas ultimately extending more than 4 kilometers. And some of the writing was beautiful, and I could see that the author wanted to use the painting to explore communication among families. But the plot that went along with this was a little convenient, and the revelation of family secrets a tad obvious.

Juan Salvatierra has died when the novella opens, but the reader learns his backstory: after a gruesome riding accident as a child, he became mute (whether for physiological or psychological reasons is unknown). He was apprenticed to a painter, later got a job at the post office, married, and had children. At the age of 20, he starts painting on these canvas rolls, recording what is happening in his life and in the community, and continues, with one roll per year, until is death. His two sons return from Buenos Aires (Salvatierra lived, and they grew up, near a river that forms the border between Argentina and Uruguay) to figure out whether a cultural institution will take the rolls of painting. While looking at the rolls, they discover that one is missing, hence the missing year, and the narrator, son Miguel, decides to investigate. Needless to say, family secrets are revealed in the course of his exploration.

I read this novella in one afternoon, and I did enjoy it. Especially after reading Zola's The Masterpiece, it was interesting to experience another artist's mode of creation and read about the images he painted. But, in the end, I felt the author was trying to do something "meaningful" and didn't quite achieve it, and I also felt he tied up the loose ends too neatly.

Great review of The Backlands. It's amazing how many authors have set novels in the sertão. It must be one of those places that stamps you forever.

Good to see there is another Camilleri out there. Going a bit darker seems like a natural progression. Looking forward to it.

After buying a half dozen or so Zola novels for this year, I still haven't read them, although I used to read him when he was more difficult to find in English translations. Makes no sense. The Masterpiece sounds excellent despite the noted reservations. At least some day I will have the opportunity to sit down and read them in some sort of logical sequence.

Following on the Zola and the Mairal book, have you read The Moon and Sixpence?

The Missing Year sounds interesting. Too bad the author didn't quite manage to end on a roll. Ha, ha.

Thanks, Sassy! What are some other books set in the sertao? So far, I've only read the Vargas Llosa, but I would definitely read more. And no, I haven't read The Moon and Sixpence, largely because I've had an aversion to Somerset Maugham after a bad experience with Of Human Bondage in my school years. I know, it's something I should get over after all these years!

Ha ha indeed, Lisa! It's short enough that it's worth reading -- it does have a lot going for it.

Abandoned for now: Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter by Simone de Beauvoir



I'm amazed by how much de Beauvoir remembers of her childhood, and she is a lovely writer, but I guess I'm just not that interested in all the details of her feelings, thoughts, etc. Maybe I'm not in the right mood and will pick it up again later; I've read almost 150 pages, but when I find myself checking to see how much more I have to read to get to the end of the chapter I know it's time to find something else to read.

103. Deep Rivers by José Maria Arguedas



This was a haunting and at times painful book to read. It is the story of Ernesto, a white Peruvian boy who was relegated to he kitchen by the relatives he was sent to live with and thus was raised by the Indian servants and came to speak their language, Quechua, and love their culture, especially their relationship to the natural world. When he got a little older, his father, a not-so-successful itinerant lawyer, took him with him as he traveled around the Andes seeking work.

As the story opens, the father is taking his son to see his estranged brother, known as the Old Man, in the ancient city of Cuzco. The Spanish colonial walls built on top of the remains of Inca stone buildings set the symbolic stage for the rest of the book, for Ernesto is caught between the two cultures. Later, father and son go to the town of Abancay, where the father hopes to stay but ultimately leaves his son at a Catholic boarding school. It is there that most of the novel takes place.

Although the usual pranks and even some terrible cruelties take place at the school -- most horribly the opaquely described repeated rapes of a mentally unstable woman called "the Idiot" -- most of Ernesto's time there is spent inside his own unhappy and lonely head. The most moving and lyrical parts describe his connection to nature, not just animals and plants but the mountains and rocks and rivers, all of which in Quechua culture have much greater significance than in white culture, and are often even personified. Aruguedas, whose early life was similar to Ernesto's, frequently uses Quechua words and Quechua songs to illustrate Ernesto's deep love of the culture and its conflict with the powers that be. Ernesto is also drawn to the myths and spirits and music of the Indian culture and endows a top he receives as a gift with the powers of communication.

I found it a little difficult to keep track of who the various schoolboys were, but I think this was intentional, as they are really more symbols of different aspects of white and mestizo upbringings than fully developed characters. Although there is not much of a plot, a couple of things of significance happen, including an uprising by local woman because the distribution of salt has been halted; feeling himself connected more to these women than to the society inside his school, Ernesto runs after them, drawing the ire of the powerful but condescending priest, the Rector, who runs the school. (Later, however, in the wake of another trouble that strikes the area, the Rector will try to protect Ernesto.) Following the uprising, the troops come to town, and that gives Arguedas the opportunity to further contrast people from the coastal regions with those from the highlands, and to further show the conflicts between the descendants of the colonialists and the indigenous populations.

Mostly, as I said, this book is about Ernesto, and the tragedy of his alienation from both worlds which leads to his living so much in his own dreams and odd ideas.

"I wanted to see Salvinia, Alcira, and Antero. And then to become a falcon and soar over the towns where I had once been happy; to descend to the levels of the rooftops, following the streams that bring water to the settlements, hovering for a moment over the familiar trees and stones that mark the boundary of the tilled fields and, later, calling down from the depths of the sky." p. 161

Because Ernesto is the center of the book, and because he is so unhappy and feels so out of place, this was in places a difficult book to read. The ending of the book is ambiguous, and not a little shocking.

Arguedas, who was also raised by Indian servants in a home in which his white stepmother despised him, became an ethnologist and ultimately killed himself. My edition had an interesting afterword by fellow Peruvian author Mario Vargas Llosa.

Great review of Deep Rivers, Rebecca. It sounded familiar to me, so after I thumbed your review I checked, and noticed that deebee had also read it and rated it highly. I'll add it to my wish list, and look for it later this month.

I bought it after deebee's review, Darryl, and finally got around to it during this quarter's Reading Globally theme read. And thanks for the thumb!

Yes, wonderful review. The theme read thread will be a great resource for me when I finally start reading SA literature.

That's a lovely review of what sounds like an interesting book.

Thanks, Lisa and Paul. I'm enjoying my quarter of catching up on the South American literature on my TBR.

Enjoyed your review of Deep Rivers, which seems to be a book written from the heart by a man who knew exactly what it was like to be an outsider.

Barry, that is exactly what it was like. I'm glad I was able to convey that.

Rebecca, your reviews are always so interesting. I wind up putting so many of them on my "check this" list, and yet I know I will only actually get to a small portion of them.

Thank you, Colleen. I can't tell you how many books I add to my list of books to investigate after reading about them here on LT and especially in Club Read. And not just to my list, but to my shelves as well!

104. Scars by Juan José Saer



When I read on the Reading Globally South American theme read thread that Saer is considered one of the top Argentinian authors, I knew I had to move this book to the top of my TBR pile. And yes, Saer is an amazing writer, whose language flows on the page. And yes, he has an imagination and a remarkable ability to focus on details. But while I admired this book, I never warmed to it.

At the heart of the novel is a murder: a husband and wife go out duck hunting with a bottle of gin, and she winds up dead. But, until the last section of the novel, which is told from the point of view of the murderer, the book focuses entirely on the narratives of three other people, a journalist, a nonpracticing lawyer, and a judge, all of whom are connected to the aftermath of the murder. These narratives start months before the murder, so the murder is only a peripheral part of their stories.

And what of their stories? The journalist is an 18-year-old who lives with his still partying 36-year-old mother and writes the weather reports for a local paper, although he seems to aspire to become a crime reporter. He hangs out with some friends, fights with his mother about their individual bottles of gin and her slutty mode of dressing, thinks a lot about sex, and becomes obsessive about thinking he sees his exact double on the street. In fact, all the narrators are obsessive. The nonpracticing lawyer has become an obsessive gambler, and the details of his lengthy nightly baccarat games are described in infinite detail. The judge is disillusioned about humanity and endlessly describes his automobile routes around the city as well as the "gorillas" who inhabit it. Only the murderer, in his brief section, seems to have the spark of humanity. Also, with the exception of the murderer, the narrators are all involved in literary ventures: the journalist, aside from writing, is a big reader and likes to talk about books; the gambler writes essays about comic book characters, and the judge is translating The Picture of Dorian Gray.

Needless to say, I had to think about why this author is great and what on earth he was trying to do with this book. And here's what I came up with. Partly, Saer is looking at identity and how we create meaning in our lives: the journalist who sees his double and is trying to figure out what his life is about, the lawyer who has become a gambler and obsessively tries to figure out systems for winning, the judge who reduces humanity to "gorillas," yet doesn't hang up on a threatening caller who repeatedly phones him. Partly he is getting inside his characters' heads and relentlessly recording their obsessions. Partly he is showing that what's important to one individual may be meaningless or just a blip to others.

In the end, I was left scratching my head. Saer writes well and gave me food for thought, but I didn't enjoy reading this book. Further, the women in the book are all just adjuncts to the men; none of them rise to being full characters.

Many of us appear a little obsessive in club read and so reading about obsessives might strike a chord with some. Enjoyed your review of Scars

In your review, you mention that one of the characters becomes obsessed with thinking he sees his doppelganger, which reminded me of Jose Saramago's The Double. Have you read that? I liked it, maybe my favorite after Blindness and The Elephant's Journey.

Really interesting review. I like these kind of reviews where the reader didn't particularly like the book, yet was left having to think about it. Yours has made me think that despite the reservations, this might be a book to look at.

Very funny, Barry, but when you become enveloped in someone else's obsession it isn't as compelling as your own. Besides, with the gambler, you know it isn't going to end well.

No, I haven't read The Double yet, Lisa. I really enjoyed the only Saramago I've read, The History of the Siege of Lisbon, and bought a couple of others after reading it, all of which are on the TBR (Death with Interruptions, The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis, and The Stone Raft).

Well, Sassy, despite the fact that I didn't really like the Saer, I am considering reading something else by him just because I found it puzzling.

Terrific reviews of Deep River and Scars. I was surprised to find Deep River on my wishlist already, or I would have added it.

Dan, you might have heard about Deep Rivers when I did, when deebee reviewed it a while ago. That's when I got it. And, thanks.

105. Open Door by Iosi Havilio



There are several unanswered questions in this puzzling and brief novel by a writer who has been hailed as a great young Argentine writer, among them what happened to a girl who was thought to be dead and why a rare old book turns up in the simple home of an aging ranch worker. But most of the novel is the story of a somewhat hapless young woman, originally an aspiring veterinarian living in a city, who ends up moving in with the aging ranch worker out in the country and doing relatively little other than having a hot romance with a neighboring girl who seems to be sexuality personified. Oh, they try various drugs too.

What gives the novel its title, and the country town its name, is the Open Door, a psychiatric hospital that operates on the principle that the mentally ill shouldn't be locked up but should be able to wander around on their own and find activities that they enjoy; there are no locked doors or gates, but apparently the inmates don't run away. And isn't that just a tidy metaphor for life! We all wander around trying to find ways to enjoy life and there isn't any way to escape.

Havilio writes well, and this was an easy and quick book to read, but I didn't really engage with the narrator or the other characters: the narrator herself seems so passive and the other characters more symbolic than real. There is another book by Havilio that continues the narrator's story, but I'm not very motivated to read it.

Oh well you can't win them all. Was this a book that caught your eye in a bookstore?

Off and on I'm reading Paradises by the same author. It's a sort of sequel to Open Door but could be read on its own. I'm having some of the same problems you had, and so the off and on. You have filled in the link between the two women though. Your review captures the style well.

hmm, think I'll pass on this one. Nice review though.

Yes, Barry, exactly -- on the fiction display table at my favorite bookstore.

Sassy, Paradises was the one I was thinking of. I'm not too motivated to read it (I think Darryl/kidzdoc read it and was underwhelmed too).

Thanks, Lisa.

106. The Unknown Masterpiece, and Gambara by Honoré de Balzac



This NYRB edition contains two complementary tales of artistic obsession: one about a painter in early 1600s Paris, one about a composer in 1830s Paris.

The first, "The Unknown Masterpiece," involves an elderly famous and wealthy artist, Frenhofer, and two younger artists based loosely on "real" artists: Porbus, who seems to be in his 40s and has achieved some limited success, and Poussin, who is an eager newcomer to Paris. In a remarkable scene, Frenhofer takes up Porbus's palette and with a few brushstrokes dramatically improves his work. The story revolves around a portrait Frenhofer has been working on for ten years of his former mistress (the unknown masterpiece of the title), a portrait he refuses to show to anyone including Porbus and Poussin who are naturally eager to see it. Poussin, despite his youth and inexperience, or perhaps because of these, has a mistress who is described as incomparably beautiful, without any flaws. He develops a plan to ask his reluctant mistress to pose for Frenhofer, in exchange for Frenhofer's allowing the two younger artists to see his portrait. When Frenhofer gives in and lets them see it, they are mystified because they are unable to discern anything except a foot extending from a blur of paint. This story had a remarkable impact on several generations of French painters, including Cezanne (who, according to the introduction to the book, wordlessly indicated that "Frenhofer, c'est moi'') and Picasso.

The second, "Gambara," is the story of an Italian composer living in abject poverty in Paris who is "discovered" by a young Italian nobleman, Count Andrea Marcosini, living in exile in Paris, who believes he has fallen in love with Gambara's wife. In a roundabout scheme to court the wife, who is devoted to her husband but attracted to the count, Andrea asks the composer to describe his opera, which he does at length, both verbally and by introducing his ideas on the piano in an extremely dissonant manner. Later, the three go to a performance of another opera, which Gambara again describes at length, and the count is also introduced to a contraption Gambara has built which replicates the sound of an orchestra, very harmoniously it must be said. Some aspects of Gambara's opera mirror his relationship with his wife, although he seems sadly oblivious to this, and one might see the count's role as a little devilish.

I have only previously read Balzac's novels, and I think I like those better than these much briefer works, whether they are considered stories or novellas. However, I did enjoy these two portraits of artists and Balzac's immersion in their artistic vision, as well as his occasional biting wit. The line for both these artists between obsession and madness is fine one.

Oh Lord Deep Rivers sounds both important and depressing. More boarding school missionaries. I guess it's the day for it as I read a post on Facebook this morning about the Catholic boarding schools in Canada. and you know some of us Americans do like to romanticize Canada. Darn. I need to retake world history. It is a wonderful review. My geography prof thought SA was the best and certainly his most favorite - I mean he loved it so much you could see it in him. It was wonderful to watch someone so in love with his field of study and a place.

Open Door doesn't sound like a very good read but I'd love to know what the "patients" chose to do and where they chose to go. Is there much of that covered in the book? Sounds like that might be a sidebar?

Hey how's The Red Road?

You've done a lot of reading lately, and I've enjoyed catching up on your reviews. Even the ones you didn't especially care for sounded interesting enough that they may go on the wishlist.

#55, 56 Thanks, Merrikay. The patients don't really appear much in Open Door. The old book that the narrator finds in the ranch worker's house describes the Open Door system, and that's about it except for a few times she runs into some of the patients. Just started The Red Road last night -- it's very bleak. (It's the fourth and so far last of the Alex Morrow series.)

#57 Thanks, Steven. I've been plugging away at an excellent but exceedingly grim nonfiction book, 1941: The Year That Keeps Returning, when I've been at home, so I've felt like reading shorter books along with that. I have some long fiction books that I'll turn to later, so then I won't be reading as many books!

107. The Red Road by Denise Mina



This latest novel about detective Alex Morrow begins with a horrific scene from 1997 involving a sexually exploited 14-year-old girl and two murders. The scene then shifts to more or less the present, and a web of corruption involving criminal lawyers and the police and possibly Morrow's crime king half brother, as Morrow tries to figure out how a set of fingerprints found at the scene of a recent murder could be an exact match for those of a young man at whose trial she is testifying, a young man who has been locked up in jail the entire time. The reader finds out what happened to that 14-year-old girl and how she is mixed up in the multiple threads of the plot. This is a bleak bleak book that reveals the nastiness and pervasiveness of corruption and the horror of what adults can do to children to further their own ends (sexually and otherwise), as well as the human desire to be loved. I have been finding less of the sense of place in Mina's later novels, and more complexity and psychology.

I'm way too squeamish for Alex Morrow, I'm afraid. Odd, since I read about other horrible things all the time. I haven't been able to put my finger on what the difference is for me.

Red Road might be too much for me.

Abandoned Blood of Requited Love by Manuel Puig



After about 75 pages, I have no idea what is going on and I have no interest in finding out. So, keeping in mind so many books, so little time, I'm giving up on this one.

:) I love that!

The reviews are adding up fast here. Enjoying your reviews even when you aren't enamored with the book

Good for you for moving on. What's next?

Blood of requited Love I think you should put this on the book page as there are no other reviews.

#54 very interesting reviews of the Balzac short stories, Poussin is one of my favourite painters and so it was great to read about a short story in which he appears.

60, 61. I like Mina, but some aspects of this were a little hard to take -- just in spots, though.

64. I realize I haven't had a real winner in a while, Dan. Hope they improve soon!

65. Lisa, not sure. I'm coming down the home stretch with 1941: The Year That Keeps Returning and it will take me a while to think about what I want to write about it. I've been picking up a few books to see what I'll take with me as my subway read this morning and haven't completely decided. (I did add The Adventures and Misadventures of Maqroll to my What I'm Reading Now section, so I'll probably take that and see how it goes.

66. I don't know, Barry; it seems a little too brief and snarky to be a real review.

I have plans to read Mina. I have them on my wishlist, but don't know when I will get to them. My plans to get to 75 books have gone by the wayside. Just hoping to get in a few more before year end. But the past week or two have been crazy busy.

As I just said over on Sassy's thread, the Mina series intrigues me because of, now, both of your comments. We haven't crossed over on crime novels, so I don't have a sense whether we look for the same things in them or not. Still, I should go pick up the first in the series and leave it in the TBR pile for when the mood strikes, or when I run out of Peter Robinsons (which is soon. I think I have one or two left before I am caught up).

Lois, I am running around today but just so you know there are three different Mina series: Garnetthill and Alex Morrow (which I've read) and Paddy Meehan (which I haven't). More later.

Garnethill is Mina's first novel and it's a good starting point.

I second that - Garnethill!

Thanks for stepping in, Kay and Merrikay. I should add that it was Kay's review that set me on my Mina journey.

Lois, I know you read a lot of police procedurals, and these aren't like that.

108. 1941: The Year That Keeps Returning by Slavko Goldstein



This is a stunning and important book, very readable and yet very hard to read. Slavko Goldstein, a Croatian Jewish journalist and publisher, set out to describe not only what happened to his family and him when the Ustasha, a fascist nationalist Croatian military group, returned to Croatia in the wake of the 1941 Nazi invasion of Yugoslavia, but also to document as thoroughly as possible what happened generally in Croatia in 1941 and how the impact of those actions reverberated in 1945, at the time of liberation, and then again starting in 1989. He has done this in detail, not shying away from the horrors of ethnic hatred, mass killings, and genocide, and as fairly as possible, attributing responsibility as precisely as the records permit. This is a a book of shining integrity.

At the beginning of the book, Goldstein explains his methods:

"So, in writing this book, I have placed all of my memories under suspicion. I have filled in the gaps and sought to make sense of them by poring over newspapers, official documents, personal letters, and memoirs of the time. My recollections were also on trial in conversations with my brother and with friends from that time whom I still see today. For the description of these times I have relied on the many documents in which I discovered a variety of lesser-known or unknown details that shed better light on the important events of this period. I have tried to be faithful to myself, to future readers of this text, and those about whom I am writing and who are no more."

and then concludes:

" 'For the living we owe respect, but to the dead only the truth' is an often quoted aphorism of Voltaire. To me it seems that we owe the truth to everyone, living and dead, equally. And we owe respect to many, both the living and the dead, but not to everyone." p. 11

It was especially meaningful for me to read this book during the time that Nelson Mandela died and was eulogized and buried. The search for truth Goldstein attempts in this book is analogous in purpose to the aims of the South African Truth and Reconciliation process.

Essentially chronological, the chapters interweave Goldstein's personal story with the documentation of the mass killings and ethnic "cleansings" that took place in the year 1941. Goldstein was 13 when first the Nazis and then the Ustasha entered his home town of Karlovac. Two days after the Germans arrived, his father, the proprietor of a bookstore and lending library, was arrested along with about 20 others, including Serbians and communists as well as Goldstein's father and one other Jew. They were first transported to various jails, where Goldstein's mother could visit and bring food to his father, and then to a nearby, newly built concentration camp; ultimately his father was probably shot in one of the many mass killings, although no records exist. Goldstein and his younger brother stayed with his mother until she was arrested, although another family was moved into their apartment, and then were farmed out to brave friends who took them in. His mother was released and joined the partisans with her two sons. Their personal stories are moving and dramatically convey the extreme tension and terror of the times, as well as the mother's courage and the courage of the friends who stood by them.

The Nazis basically left the Ustasha in charge of Croatia, and the goal of the Ustasha was to create a nationalist Croatia: to eliminate not only the Jews and the Roma but perhaps more importantly the Serbians (who were Orthodox, as opposed to the Catholic Croatians). They did so brutally, and in a variety of ways, but principally by arresting/rounding up Serbians in their villages and then taking them out to the woods, shooting them, and throwing their bodies into pits or caverns. They also burned Serbian villages to the ground to drive out any remaining women, children, and old people, although they also frequently killed them too. Through detailing the history step by step, Goldstein attempts to understand the original causes of what he calls "ethnic cleansing" as well as the forces that caused it to grow into an ever more horrifying series of events.

Throughout the book, but especially in a chapter entitled "A Tale of Two Villages," Goldstein develops the theme of "the year that keeps returning." By looking at neighboring Serbian and Croatian villages, he shows how the destruction of and mass killings in the Serbian village in 1941 led to fear and some revenge killings in the Croatian village in 1945. For some time after that, they coexisted uneasily, but this all fell apart again in the wars of the early 1990s, when there were mass killings of Croatians. Goldstein repeatedly makes the point that it is wrong to punish the mass of the population for the crimes of individuals. As he writes:

"Today's district of Lasinja includes only two Serbian villages, Sjeničak and Prkos. During the second world war, between 600 and 700 civilian inhabitants of these two villages and more than 100 members of the Partisan army were killed. During the same war and in the immediate postwar period about 150 residents of Lasinja and the Croatian villages were killed and several dozen more were killed in the ranks of the Home Guard and the Partisan and Ustasha armies. The war ended for these victims a long time ago. Is it not time that we stop commemorating them separately and in opposition to each other? They are not all equal victims nor are they equal criminals, but we should stop trying to use our victims in provocations, we should establish who the criminals were and single them out from all collective entities: villages, movements, and peoples alike." p. 465

The end of the book brings the reader up to date, with Goldstein's experiences during the communist era. Starting out as a partisan (and a commissar within his military unit), but then leaving the party and returning to school, he found himself frustrated during a particularly harsh period of the Tito era and going to Israel for a few years, but ended up returning to what he considered his home.

What I would like to convey about this book is that while the history is horrifying (and new to me), it is Goldstein's approach that is so remarkable. His desire to find out the truth and document both the good and the evil so we can know who did what is compelling and moving, and his portraits of individuals and what they did or failed to do is fascinating. He recovers the personal and the individual from the mass of numbers.

At the end of the book, he writes:

"The twentieth century produced the greatest hopes for mankind, but it buried most of them. It became the graveyard of great ideals. It taught us that ideals are most often a seductive chimera and that doubt is not a fatal weakness but a necessary defense against fatal beliefs.

This book was written with such thoughts in mind." pp. 559-560

That is an excellent and thought provoking review, Rebecca. I have added to my wishlist, but will need to be in the right frame of mind to read it.

It took me a long time to read it, Colleen, because after reading for a while I just had to put the book down. There was only so much I could take at a time.

I so appreciate being able to read a review like yours. I appreciate the time you put into assembling your thoughts. It sounds amazing and the author's purpose and method intriguing. It sounds to me like the best book to read about those events.

Did you notice kidzdoc named The Hired Man as his idea of the most unrecognized book of the year? It might be something you would be interested in.

Thanks, Merrikay. It took me several days after I finished 1941 to put my thoughts together and then I had to wait until the weekend when I had some time to put it together. I don't usually take so much time for my reviews but I felt this book deserved it.

I haven't had a chance to read LT threads for several days so I haven't seen Darryl's pick, but I'm now about to make myself another cup of coffee and cruise through the threads.

What I was going to say is exactly what NanaCC wrote: excellent and thought provoking review. Especially that last quote--I'll be thinking about that for a while.

Brilliant review Rebecca, ethnic cleansing is such a hard subject to understand, but in my view everyone who commits a crime in the name of ethnic cleansing is a criminal. Having said that, attempts to punish wrong doers retrospectively, (ie decades after the event) can only happen if the two sides have learnt to trust each other.

The search for truth is of course important, but what do you do with that truth once you have found it?

Thanks, Steven and Barry. Barry, I think truth is necessary but not sufficient. Without truth, there is no way to move forward. But whether people will move forward and not remain enmeshed in the past is up to them. At least that's my take on it. That's why, I think (although I haven't read enough about this), the South African commission was Truth AND Reconciliation. Although I would add that I think Goldstein would say, and I would too, that another prerequisite for reconciliation is identifying and appropriately punishing the guilty (if they're alive to be punished, or at least not being morally equivocal in textbooks, monuments, etc., if they're dead).

Rebecca if you're interested in the SA story, I really loved Country of My Skull. It was also made into a movie.

Rebecca, excellent review of 1941: The Year That Keeps Returning. So much to learn in Goldstein's narrative and to respect in his process.

Although I already had the book on my wishlist from when you first mentioned you were reading it, this line from your review This is a a book of shining integrity. made me go back and make sure it was wishlisted. Wow. It sounds like an amazing book, and one that I will tackle after I finish Bloodlands, which I haven't had the reading stamina for the last couple of weeks. What I have read is making me think about Eastern Europe in a whole new light. It sounds like 1941 will do the same for the Balkans.

Fantastic review!

Superb review Rebecca - thank you! Like Lisa I wishlisted 1941: The Year That Keeps Returning when you mentioned it earlier. I thought - 'that looks like powerful stuff'. Your review confirms that it is indeed a very well written book that I look forward to reading. Ever since the break-up of Yugoslavia in the '90s I've been fascinated by the history of the peoples that live in those parts of the Balkans and the complex and dense ethnic mix there. Goldstein's book looks like one that will certainly add to my learning.

As Barry said above, everyone who commits a crime in the name of ethnic cleansing is a criminal. All across the world there are simmering conflicts, and others which are boiling over, where there is mistrust and hatred based on ignorance and the differences of religion or ethnicity or political belief...etc. We need more truth and a lot more reconciliation. Thanks again.

Fabulous review of 1941: The Year That Keeps Returning, Rebecca. I have added it to my wishlist.

Thanks, MJ, Lisa, Dan, Paul, and Linda.

Lisa, the book definitely opened up a whole new area for me, and it makes me more interested in learning more about the early 1990s Bosnia, etc. conflict. Paul, since you've been fascinated by that period, do you have any book recommendations?

109. The Adventures and Misadventures of Maqroll by Álvaro Mutis



I found myself reading more slowly as I neared the end of this magnificent book, a collection of seven novellas, because I was reluctant to leave the world of Maqroll the Gaviero (lookout) and his diverse and far-flung friends. In varying styles, including describing Maqroll as a friend who sends him dispatches from around the globe, Mutis presents the tale of an inveterate wanderer, usually by sea, who consistently gets involved in money-making schemes, often not exactly within the law, that come to naught, who is steadfastly loyal to his friends, and who is given to reading historical books and musing philosophically about the important issues of life.

As the novellas progress, the reader becomes more and more familiar with Maqroll and some of the key episodes of his life, although his origins are murky: he travels on a clearly forged Cyrpiot passport but it is unclear where he was born, and the text hints that he had an unhappy childhood and took to a life at sea (as the lookout who climbed the tallest mast) at an extremely early age. He is older when the novellas begin, and to some extent they jump back and forth in time, so the reader has to figure out which adventure or misadventure came first. And because he is older, there is an elegiac if not downright melancholy feel to his thoughts. This is a fascinating work partly because it combines the downright adventurous with an equal helping of philosophy.

So what of his adventures? They range from traveling up a South American river with somewhat sketchy guides to find some lumber mills, starting a brothel using women who pretend to be stewardesses, engaging in a scheme to substitute lower quality oriental rugs for valuable ancient ones, transporting some mysterious boxes for a highly suspicious person, gold mining, and more. One novella focuses on Maqroll's best friend, Abdul Bashur, another inveterate wanderer, who sprang from a Lebanese family of shipbuilders and ship owners, his family, and his search for the perfect ship, and others involve other unforgettable friends of Maqroll, including a variety of strong women who he has been deeply attached to.

Mutis vividly depicts the environment, whether it's the hot, humid, buggy tropics, the cold of Vancouver, or the activity of a Mediterranean port. Above all, the reader gets a feeling for the sea, for life on freighter and other ships, and for the vibrant seediness (and criminality) of port communities. Mutis was a poet (who apparently wrote about Maqroll in poems long before he got the idea of writing a novella about him), but he was also gainfully employed as a publicist for an oil company and then a US film company, so he presumably traveled to many of the places he "traveled" to as a character in some of these novellas.

Maqroll lived a very full life, full of trials, hardships, love, friendship, adventure, stagnancy, but it is his reflections on literature and life, usually dark, that are as compelling if not more so than his adventures. Does he find a little happiness at the end?

Wonderful review! I like authors that create a world I don't want to leave.

Thanks, and I know. It makes it hard to know what book to read next, especially since this one left me in a sort of melancholy mood. So, since I'm more or less on vacation for the next week, I decided to pick up a fun tome, and have started The Count of Monte Cristo. With enough reading time at home, I might just finish it by the end of the year.

Great review, and Maqroll's adventures do sound like fun.

Just FYI for those who may be looking for this: The same seven novellas (and same translation by Edith Grossman) were also published in two volumes by Harper Perennial, one with three of the seven novellas and the other with four. The titles are confusing, though, as one is titled The Adventures of Maqroll, and the other just Maqroll.

I think you're in for a real treat with the Count. I reread it about three years ago and was amazed at how it held up, both from a younger reader to my current self, and more importantly as a story of human passions. Happy reading.

#93 I read the NYRB edition, which includes all seven novellas, and the other editions may be out of print, but they were all translated by Edith Grossman. My edition also has a lovely introduction by Francisco Goldman. And, to make it even better, I bought it at a remaindered price!

#94 I'm having fun with it so far, Sassy, and I never read it before.

Excellent review of The Adventures and Misadventures of Maqroll, Rebecca. Finishing The Count of Monte Cristo by the end of the year is quite an ambitious goal!

Rebecca - on Yugoslavia break-up - one that I'd recommend straight off the bat is My War Gone By, I Miss It So by Anthony Loyd. It's one of the best accounts by a war correspondent I ever read, and probably is the best from any conflict of the last twenty-odd years that I read. (I realise that there are many good books out there, but this one really resonated. I think he's an excellent writer.) I still have Another Bloody Love Letter on my TBR as well, which also looks good.

For a less battlefield oriented and possibly more domestic impression, I'd also recommend Slavenka Drakulic's work. My wife and I both enjoyed How We Survived Communism and Even Laughed a few years ago - essays and vignettes from her life in Eastern Europe, but primarily from a Yugoslav perspective (1980s and early '90s, right up to the civil wars). I have a few more of hers TBR as well - she's written both fiction and non-fiction on the Balkans.

I'll look for the Loyd book as well, Paul. *horning in on your recommendations to Rebecca* I read How We Survived Communism years ago and remember enjoying it, although I never followed up with any of her other books.

I was in Belgrade and Kosovo in 1988, little suspecting all that would befall the region in the years to follow.

Thanks, Paul. I'll look for the Lloyd book. I own a book by Dravulic called Two Underdogs and a Cat: Three Reflections on Communism, and it's somewhere on my TBR shelves, so I'll look for that too.

I've made a note of the Goldstein book, Rebecca. Whether I will ever have the fortitude to read it, I'm not sure. I have a copy of Drakulic's novel, S: A Novel about the Balkans on my TBR shelves, but haven't cracked the cover yet.

Thanks for stopping by, Linda! Nice to see you here.

Why does Maqroll sound familiar? Maybe someone else in CR also reviewed it.(?) Anyway, sounds fun. Enjoy the count's adventures.

Paul - I would love to learn more about My War Gone By...

Well, I think I'll finish one more book by the end of the year, so it's time to post my year's best, etc. I'm happy to say I had a great reading year again and, as usually, have failed at narrowing down my favorite reads. They are listed more or less in reverse order of when I read them.

Best of the Best

Fiction
The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas (hope to finish tomorrow)
The Adventures and Misadventures of Maqroll by Álvaro Mutis
A House in the Country by José Donoso
Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter by Mario Vargas Llosa
Onitsha by J.M.G. Le Clezio
the Bridge of Beyond by Simone Schwarz-Bart
Morality Play by Barry Unsworth
Memoirs of a Porcupine by Alain Mabanckou
Kristin Lavransdatterby Sigrid Unset
The Greenlanders by Jane Smiley
The Sorrow of War by Bao Ninh
Transit by Anna Seghers
Dead Souls by Nikolai Gogol
The Issa Valley by Czeslaw Milosz
War & War by László Krasznahorkai
The Opportune Moment, 1855 by Patrik Ourednik
Lost Illusions by Honoré de Balzac
Explosion in a Cathedral by Alejo Carpentier
Bring Up the Bodies by Hilary Mantel
The Toiler of the Sea by Victor Hugo

Nonfiction
1941: The Year That Keeps Returning by Slavko Goldstein
The African by J.M.G. Le Clezio
Dersu the Trapper by V. K. Arseniev
The Riddle of the Labyrinth by Margalit Fox
Surrender on Demand by Varian Fry
An Armenian Sketchbook by Vasily Grossman
Young Stalin by Simon Sebag Montefiore
My Century by Aleksander Wat
The Black Count by Tom Reiss

The Best of the Rest

Fiction
Where There's Love, There's Hate by Adolfo Bioy Casares and Silvina Ocampo
Broken Glass by Alain Mabanckou
Hangsaman by Shirley Jackson
The Laughing Man by Victor Hugo
The Belly of Paris by Émile Zola
To Say Nothing of the Dog by Connie Willis
Astragal by Albertine Sarrazin
The Necklace and Other Tales by Guy de Maupassant
To Each His Own by Leonardo Sciascia
A Harlot High and Low by Honoré de Balzac
Kornél Esti by Dezsõ Kosztolányi
Pot Luck by Émile Zola

Nonfiction
Breaking the Maya Code by Michael D. Coe
The Broken Road: From the Iron Gates to Mount Athos by Patrick Leigh Fermor
Rue de Retour by Abdellatif Laabi
The Orientalist by Tom Reiss

Runners-Up
Maira by Darcy Ribeiro
A Dead Man's Memoir (A Theatrical Novel) by Mikhail Bulgakov
La Reine Margot by Alexandre Dumas
Case Closed by Patrik Ourednik
Blue White Red by Alain Mabanckou
The Bottom of the Jar by Abdellatif Laabi
Murther & Walking Spirits by Robertson Davies
Freud by Jonathan Lear

Fun, Fun, Fun
Sister Bernadette's Barking Dog by Kitty Burns Florey
Dance of the Seagull and Treasure Hunt by Andrea Camilleri
Lots of books by Denise Mina

Duds and Disappointments
Laughable Loves by Milan Kundera
Where'd You Go, Bernadette? by Maria Semple
Midnight in Peking: How the Murder of a Young Englishwoman Haunted the Last Days of Old China by Paul French
The Examined Life: How We Lose and Find Ourselves by Stephen Grosz
Pieces of Light: How the New Science of Memory Illuminates the Stories We Tell about Our Pasts by Charles Fernyhough
It Was a Long Time Ago and It Never Happened Anyway: Russia and the Communist Past by David Satter

Now for the statistics (may not add up correctly because I'm not obsessive enough to check)

Fiction: 90 (82%) Nonfiction: 20 (18%)
Male authors: 87 (78%) Female authors: 25 (22%) (number is higher because I read two books co-authored by a man and a woman)

Authors who were new to me: 54
Books recommended by other LTers: 15
Books read for or inspired by theme reads: 40

Books on my shelves longer than 1 year: 20
Books on my shelves longer than 20 years: 5

Geographic origin of authors

Africa: 7 (Congo 4, Nigeria 1, Senegal 2)
Central America & the Caribbean: 2 (Cuba 1, Guadeloupe 1)
Asia: 4 (Burma/Myanmar 1, Indonesia 2, Vietnam 1)
Europe: 65 (Belgium 1, Czechoslovakia/Czech Republic 3, England & the UK 21, France 19, Germany 1, Hungary 3, Italy 5, Norway 1, Poland 3, Russia/Soviet Union 5, Yugoslavia and the Countries It Broke Up Into 1)
Middle East and North Africa: 2 (Morocco 2)
South America: 11 (Argentina 5, Brazil 2, Chile 1, Colombia 1, Peru 2)
US and Canada: 20 (US fiction 7, US nonfiction 11, Canada 2)

Books by non-US/UK/Canadian authors: 68 (62%)

So what do I make of this?

I should continue to try to read more books by women; my total by female authors would have been much lower if I hadn't discovered Denise Mina!

I think I did pretty well at reading globally, but I would like to continue to broaden my reading.

Beyond that, I just like to read what strikes my fancy at the moment!

A couple of my all time favorites made your best of the best list: Kristin Lavransdatter and The Issa Valley. Many, many of the others are on my wishlist. Thank goodness I've been adding them slowly throughout the year, or my wishlist would have doubled all at once. :-)

I'm impressed with the dent you made in your TBR list. Five you had owned longer than 20 years. Way to whittled down your backlist. As always I'm impressed with the geographic range of your reading.

I have one more review to write, and then I'm going to do my summary. One of my favorite thread activities!

Great list. Should we give you a hard time for having 45 of 110 books in your best list, or congratulate you on having such a good year of reading? ... Of course, by posting this I've kind of just done both.

Dan - My War Gone By, I Miss It So - It's a strikingly honest account by a young freelancer in the field, covering the Yugoslav Civil War, who becomes addicted to the adrenaline rush of front line danger, and addicted to heroin when he's away from it. It's very well written, and loyd doesn't hide his disdain for the modern war correspondent from the syndicated agencies and 'well-regarded' press who too frequently would bus in and bus out of the conflict according to where the latest massacre occurs, withdrawing to the comforts of the Holiday Inn...

There is my own very brief review and some other far better and more comprehensive ones up on the book page if you're interested.

Just writing this has made me want to get to his follow up collection of essays and memoirs from the front Another Bloody Love Letter some time in 2014.

Rebecca, I'm looking forward to your next year of reading. You've read so many interesting books.

Happy New Year!

Lisa, I think it was you who recommended both The Issa Valley and Kristin Lavransdatter to me, although I already had KL on the TBR based on someone else's review of it a year or so earlier.

Dan, I'm a little embarrassed by the number of books on the list. If I had to cut it down to 10, this is what I do right now, but it could change at any time, because I loved all those books:

The Issa Valley
The Bridge of Beyond
The Greenlanders
Transit
The Adventures and Misadventures of Maqroll
Dersu the Trapper
1941: The Year That Keeps Returning
My Century
The Toiler of the Sea
Morality Play

That was an interesting exercise, but . . .

Thanks for the review, Paul.

And thanks, Colleen. I'm interested to see what I'll be reading too!

Rebecca, I am favoriting your 'best of the year' list until I have time for some exploring. I have only read one, but thankfully at least own a good number of the others.

Have a Happy New Year! I'm looking forward to following your reading in 2014.

Sorry for torturing that out of you...ten is easier on my memory though. : )

But it could almost as easily be another ten, Dan . . .

I have to start somewhere...

Finished The Count of Monte Cristo, but can't write a review until tomorrow, so I'll probably post it on both this and my 2014 thread.

Yeah for the Count. Looking forward to it.

110. The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas



What a wonderful read this was! I was totally absorbed in the well-known tale of a young man who is unjustly imprisoned, makes a remarkable escape, and then seeks revenge on the people who were responsible for his imprisonment. I was amazed by the broad scope of Dumas's imagination, his descriptive abilities, the breadth of his knowledge, his intricate (and I mean intricate) plotting, his juggling of characters, and much more. The character of the Count is also fascinating, even if as a reader I had to suspend disbelief about some aspects of it. And I also had to suspend disbelief for a few of the plot developments at the end.

In the course of what is in essence a story of vengeance, Dumas also paints a damning portrait of Parisian society and depicts the post-revolutionary, post-Napoleon era. As I've been reading more 19th century French literature, I found this fascinating, and the notes to my Oxford World Classics edition were helpful too. Although not addressed in the notes, I also would be interested in knowing whether the inclusion of what was obviously a lesbian couple (well obvious to a 21st century reader 100s of pages before it was confirmed by one of them cutting her hair and dressing as a man) was considered shocking when the book came out in 1844. I know the original English translations were bowdlerized.

This is undoubtedly a tome, but compulsively readable. It was a great book to end the year with.

Happy New Year to all!

My 2014 thread is here!