I met a woman whose colleague’s arms were hacked off with a machete. She was a petite gamine sort of person, a refugee from Pakistan, or Malaysia, where atheism is punishable by death. Her husband and his colleagues were blogging about their disbelief and that put him — and her —- in mortal peril.
She told me the machete story in Toronto, reluctantly and calmly. I was shocked; she didn’t ‘look like’ someone whose life had been in danger. After that I wondered how many of the random people I met day to day had suffered similar trauma.
#35 in 2023
I thought about this woman again while reading Paul Yoon’s novel Run Me to Earth. I could practically recite by heart all the details of the two European world wars. But of what happened in Laos, in Vietnam, I only have the vaguest idea. With the language of a poet, Yoon pulls you inside 1960s Laos, when the country was bombed by the United States every eight minutes.
The story follows three kids ages seventeen fighting for survival in a field hospital in the Plain of Jars in 1969. One of them gets evacuated to Perpignan, France. Two do not. It’s a beautiful, though harrowing, story. On the cover, Miriam Toews says ‘you must read this book'. I concur.
The rain came in furious bursts, never lasting for more than a minute, but it felt as though the roof wouldn’t be able to hold the force of the weather. They watched the miniature waterfall in the ward that lasted long enough for Vang to amputate a leg above the knee. They would use the pooling rainwater to mop the floors.
Yoon mostly avoids sensationalist violence but there is an act of vengeance which is startling, gruesome, and satisfying. You come out the other end of the novel feeling you finally understand something you should have known all along.
#36 in 2023
How relieved I was to discover that my next book had nothing to do with war: Shark’s Fin and Sichuan Pepper: A Sweet-Sour Memoir of Eating in China by British food writer Fuchsia Dunlop,
It turns out that all you need to cook well is a cleaver.
Dunlop spent decades exploring Chinese life, language, and, especially, cuisine. She learned the most obscure words for foodstuffs before she knew the word for ‘umbrella’. She was shadowed by policemen who suspected her of working for human rights groups rather than hunting for the secrets of red-braised pork.
The country was still in the stranglehold of the decaying communist system. Stuffy bureaucrats made key decisions in every state-run institution and state-owned restaurants. If you obeyed the rules and tried to make arrangements through official channels, whether they were for a cooking lesson or a trip to a forbidden part of the country, you would be thwarted at every turn. Everything would be impossible: the system, it seemed, was designed to say ‘no’. Yet in other ways, China was positively anarchic: anything was possible. You just had to improvise.
Dunlop does not wade hard into Chinese politics; nevertheless, there is a riveting chapter on Uighur culture and cuisine, and the tremendous prejudices from which the Uighurs suffer.
Eventually her passion dies and she fears to eat in China’s kitchens because of the chemicals the food might contain or because the meat might come from a creature on the endangered animals list. And then — I won't spoil the ending for you, but it does involve food.
#37 in 2023
Percival Everett The Body of Martin Aguilerra
“Put your seats in an upright position,” the flight attendant said, and I read this entire book as the plane made its descent into Riga and taxiied to the gate. Slotted in the genre of Western noir, it felt like a draft Everett made for a different book. A retired university professor stumbles upon his friend’s dead body and uncovers a massive government plot. Everett-ish to a T, including a sweet grandchild; a love affair between sixty year olds; a maggott-y corpse; kidnapping; self-flagellating Mexican Catholics; a murderous veterinarian. Read Watershed instead.
Also, I forgot my iPad on that plane and it went all the way back to Warsaw. I still haven't regained it, though hopes are high. But I blame Everett for my loss. :)
#38 in 2023
Edith Wharton The Bunner Sisters
Older sister dotes on younger sister, buys her a clock as a birthday gift and slowly but surely, tickety-tickety-tock, disaster engulfs them. Wharton also wrote ghost stories and this story of two women trapped in their ideas of correct behaviour and genteel aspirations in 1890s Manhattan is so suspenseful that when I woke up at 4 am with jet lag, I reached for the book and plowed through to the bitter end. It boggles my mind that anyone born and bred in New York City could be as naive as these two sisters, but that’s how Wharton describes them, making a living in a shabby little store, sewing dresses and twisting artificial flowers for hats. Reams of fabric and thread roll through the story, needles emerge from women’s lips like nutshells from a squirrel, and all seems dull but dependable until into their lives comes a German who sells clocks.
The mere act of going out from the monastic quiet of the shop into the tumult of the streets filled her with a subdued excitement which grew too intense for pleasure as she was swallowed by the engulfing roar of Broadway or Third Avenue
That night she could not sleep; but as she lay cold and rigid at her sister’s side, she suddenly felt the pressure of Evelina’s arms, and heard her whisper: “Oh, Ann Eliza, warn’t it heavenly?”
For the first time in her life she dimly faced the awful problem of the inutility of self-sacrifice.
#39 in 2023
I admire Sarah Polley from tip to toe. She is an expert in trying not to flinch. You might know Polley as a child actor, or recall her Oscar acceptance speech after she won Best Adapted Screenplay for Women Talking.
In Run Towards the Danger: Confrontations with a Body of Memory, Polley pushes herself to talk even when it makes her ashamed or fearful. Her struggle to say ‘Me Too’ is painfully familiar, as is her chagrin that Jian Ghomeshi was not punished for his sexual assaults. But my aghast-o-meter went off the charts while reading about the wanton misuse of her nine-year-old body and mind during Terry Gilliam’s shoot of Baron von Munchhausen.
After Terry yelled “Action!” I began my run as instructed. Blasts of debris exploded on the ground around me, accompanied by deafening booms that made me feel as if I myself had exploded. The log I was to run under was partially on fire. ..I couldn’t breathe. It didn’t seem possible that this could have been the plan, that things hadn’t just gone terribly wrong.
There’ s a particular inner writhing, a sickening churn of recognition that I feel during Polley’s self-criticisms, particularly when she notices those deferential cadences that she and most women are so prone to use; and especially when she doesn’t notice them — for example when she confronts Gilliam decades later in a well considered letter, in which, at the very end, she apologizes for her ‘ babbling’. Somebody hand me a Sharpie so I can strike that part out.
I’m writing from the Ventspils International Writers’ and Translator’s House. The cobblestones seem scrubbed with toothbrushes; the baked goods are dangerous and the scent of strawberries fills the market. The sea is a stroll away. A good place to struggle with words.
The Tasmanian artist Brigita Ozoliņš is here and she made a special performance on June 14 to commemorate the 15,000 innocent Latvian citizens who were deported to Siberia by the Soviets in order to subjugate the population via terror just like the Russians are doing in Ukraine right now. Brigita spent nine hours in the market square hammering the lists of the deported into a wall and writing out by hand all the names of people from Ventspils who were locked into a cattle car and sent away to perish. Here’s how Latvian TV reported the event.
People came up to to Brigita and asked her to help find the name of a family member who had disappeared. We have no idea what happened to him, her, them, they said. The title of her performance was ‘My name is…” But Mani sauc could also mean “They are calling me.”
Reading now: Claire Louise-Bennett, Checkout 19
Still to read: Raymond Radiguet, The Devil in the Flesh
A book I really didn’t like: I tried to read Neil Gaiman, The Sandman. Dream Country, 1990, and hated one story so intensely that Gaiman is in my bad books forever. Don’t pretend that merely talking about the heinous behaviour of men is a way of standing up for women’s rights. Not when your images are perfectly designed for that daily wank.
**
COMING UP: Here are the new titles generated by my eccentric system.
Featured Author: Percival Everett, Glyph
Second Latest Saved Title: Kingsley Amis, The Anti-Death League, 1966
Reader Recommended: Alberto Manguel, A Reading Diary: A Passionate Reader’s Reflections on a Year of Books, 2004 (thank you, Māra)
Oldest Title on the List: Robert Musil, The Confusions of Young Törless, 1906
The Random List: Boris Fishman, Savage Feast: Three Generations, Two Continents, and a Dinner Table 2019 (a memoir with recipes)
Machado de Assis, The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas, 1881 (might be funny)
Tove Jansson, The True Deceiver, 2009 (love this writer)
Jacques Derrida, Writing and Difference, 1981 (doubt I will get past the first page)
Antoine Wilson, Mouth to Mouth, 2022 (one of Barack Obama’s favourite books of 2022)
Wallace Stevens, Selected Poems, 2011
Once again, thank you Banuta! Such a delight to read your reviews. And a special thanks for mentioning my performance - I am very chuffed!