ALI AND NINO – Kurban Said

Next installment of Tommi Reads the World – the last of the As.

Country: Azerbaijan
Title: Ali and Nino, A Love Story
Author: Kurban Said
Language: German
Translator: Jenia Graman
Publisher: E. P. Tal (1937), First published in the US by The Overlook Press (1999)

“I, your Nino, I too am a tiny piece of this Europe that you hate, and here in Tiflis I feel it more than ever. I love you, and you love me.  But I love woods and meadows, and you love hills and stones and sand. And that’s why I am afraid of you, afraid of your love and your world.”

“Other people will probably say I stay at home because I do not want to leave Nino’s dark eyes. Maybe.  Maybe these people will even be right. For to me those dark eyes are my native earth, the call of home to the son a stranger tries to lead astray. I will defend the dark eyes of my homeland from the invisible danger.”

Published in Vienna in 1937, Ali and Nino was forgotten during WWII and fell out of print. Jenia Graman found a copy in a used bookstore in postwar Berlin and translated it in 1970. The history of the novel and its authorship is its own story.  Kurban Said is a pseudonym, and there has been a bit of speculation and even claims made as to authorship, but nothing has been confirmed. Despite not knowing for sure the identity of the author, I elected to include it in my “Tommi Reads the World” challenge because it is set in Azerbaijan, and because the most likely author is Lev Nussimbaum (a Jewish man born in Baku who converted to Islam – he adopted the name Essad Bey after he converted) along with the Baroness Elfriede Ehrenfels, an Austrian with whom Nussimbaum had a very intense friendship with – the romantics will say they were writing their own love story with Ali and Nino.

The novel follows Ali, an Islamic boy “of the sand” with a lion’s heart. He loves the desert.  He loves his culture. He loves his people.  He loves his home. But he also loves Nino, a beautiful Georgian Christian, who craves trees and meadows, and who has European tastes.  Against all odds, their relationship grows.  Ali is willing to give up certain traditions for Nino, and Nino is also willing to give up some of her own dreams for him.  But she will not convert.  Ali’s family doesn’t really protest the match – they are men who don’t believe women have souls or opinions, and they believe she would have beautiful children.  Ali is a bit disgusted at how they discuss his future wife, but that is the constant battle that rages within him as he tries to position who he is and his beliefs with his love for Nino.  Nino’s family takes a little bit of convincing – ultimately, they agree, thanks to an Armenian who convinces them that the merging of Ali and Nino will have far reaching positive implications.

But a Russian Revolution and world war come to Azerbaijan, and Ali will fight for his home.  While the novel is written as a love story, and it has been compared to Romeo and Juliet, and the novel itself even draws that comparison between Ali and Nino, I’d argue that the true love story is between Ali and his home.

Ali and Nino is a slim novel with an epic story.  It is heartbreaking and infuriating, and also really funny.  Both Ali and Nino are quick witted with delightful senses of humor, and there are scenes, even during very tumultuous and chaotic times, that had me laughing out loud.  I am very glad that the novel was rediscovered and that it continues to be published.

Read this book.

HOW TO SAY BABYLON – Safiya Sinclair

“With echoes of Educated” is not a selling point for me; I, in a very unpopular opinion, found that book overhyped with a narrator I neither trusted nor liked.  Other than some fuzzy timelines and a focus on the power of learning, I’m pleased to say Safiya Sinclair’s How to Say Babylon (Simon & Schuster 2023) is authentic, genuine, and full of a roaring heart – in short, it’s nothing like Educated.

Safiya Sinclair is a poet.  While it may have taken Derek Walcott to make her believe it, she was a poet long before he said it.  What she does with words, how she molds them, strings them, hums them, is an artform.  This is her mother’s doing, lit with the fire of her father’s anger and power become her own.  The memoir chronicles her rigid Rastafarian upbringing with a father who became increasingly more controlling the older she got, and a mother whose spark dulled with each passing year.  Sinclair found solace in words.  No.  That’s not right. Sinclair found rebellion in words. Rage in words.  Freedom in words.  Her father sought to lock her in a cage; her mother gave her the gift of words to escape. 

Sinclair is unflinching in her portrayal of a father whose voice was like warm honey or the sharp blade of a machete, unflinching in her portrayal of a mother who sacrificed her to his wrath, unflinching in her portrayal of a country that eagerly lapped her blood. It’s raw, unfiltered, and broken – like her.

How to Say Babylon is the story of a woman healing her inner child, standing strong next to memories that could destroy, finding forgiveness for a love that was never severed and a past that cannot be excused, listening to the water that defined her younger years, and knowing where her heart beats loudest. Even still.

Read this book.

 

SILVER ALERT – Lee Smith

After I finished Backman’s novella, I still had several hours left of travel.  Enter Lee Smith’s Silver Alert (Algonquin 2023), which I downloaded on Libby.  A North Carolina resident, Smith’s writing vibrates and roars with the Southern gothic and grotesque – the voices her writing bring to life echo Flannery O’Connor and William Faulkner, loud and unforgettable on the page (or in this case, in my ear).  It’s been a few years since I’ve read any Smith, but this was a no-brainer.

I’ve read some less than favorable reviews of the novel, which were written by folks who either aren’t familiar with or don’t enjoy the genre, and who clearly didn’t actually read the novel.  I’d advise that you ignore them (and me) and decide for yourself. 

The novel is one of dark humor.  Herb Atlas, a wealthy man on wife number three, is struggling with overbearing adult children who want him to put his beautiful wife into a facility.  Susan, his younger wife, is suffering from early onset Alzheimer’s, and Herb is trying to take care of her the best he can, but she keeps running off the home health nurses.  Enter Dee Dee (or Renee as she introduces herself to Herb), a young woman running from a childhood of abuse, human trafficking, assault, and addiction.  She’s a manicurist, and a rather hot one at that, and Herb hires her for Susan. (Despite having not seen his penis in years, he is still a bit of the womanizer.) Susan gravitates to the young woman, a peace settling on her that Herb hasn’t seen in a long time.

Dee Dee is dedicated to making a different life for herself, a new life.  She’s taking on new clients, making money, and has fallen in love with a rich but strange young man.  But the past rears its head when her dear friend begs for help, a type of help that isn’t exactly legal.  It’s a past that becomes a present that is going to catch up with her.  Before it can, Herb’s family swoops in.  He’s been diagnosed with stage four prostate cancer and can no longer provide for himself, let alone Susan.  Despite his protests, the children are moving both of them to a facility. When Dee Dee comes to tell him goodbye, he decides to take her for a spin in his yellow Porsche – a car he’d bought for his beloved Susan, and a car whose keys had been hidden from him.  He’s not supposed to be driving, and Renee/Dee Dee is not supposed to be with him.  But the pair take on the Keys together, the silver alert flashing as they drive.

It’s a quick read of found family, dark humor, and second and third and even seventh chances.  Read this book.

AND EVERY MORNING THE WAY HOME GETS LONGER AND LONGER – Fredrik Backman

Fredrik Backman is a hearthug of an author, someone I can expect to break my heart while still wrapping me in a hug.  I was looking for an audio book to read while travelling for Thanksgiving, and when I saw Backman’s And Every Morning the Way Home Gets Longer and Longer (Simon & Schuster 2016), a slim novella, on Libby, I decided it was perfect.  I didn’t realize until I was several minutes into listening just how perfect it would be for a day of family and giving thanks.

No one is better than Backman at understanding and presenting human nature and how perfectly imperfect life is, how perfectly imperfect we are.  His full-length novels hum with that spirit and heart, and this novella is no different that the longer works.

The novella opens with Noah, a young boy, talking about his experiences with his grandfather, how he’d take the young boy out to various locations, hand him a compass, and tell him to take them home. How he’d shared a love of math with the young boy, promising him that math would always lead him home.  But the grandfather is failing, his memories are falling out of his grasp, merging and blending and some simply disappearing, he’s confusing his numbers-loving-grandson, Noah, with his words-loving-son, Ted. He’s afraid of this loosening grasp on life, and this novella is his world flashing before him.  The smell of hyacinth, a boat, the cigarettes he stopped smoking when she told him she was pregnant but he finds himself suddenly craving, his favorite joke that he’s forgotten the punch line to.  He’s fading in front of son.  In front of his grandson – and the memories are flooding the eyes and hearts of all three of the men.

The novella is one of mortality and memories and lives worth living, loving, and mourning the light as it fades from those we’ve never known a day without.

Read this book.

THE LONG GAME – Elena Armas

Small North Carolina town.  Girls little league soccer team. Goats.  Cute cover. Slow burn of an “enemies to lovers” between two out of towners tasked with saving the soccer team. I thought The Long Game by Elena Armas (Atria 2023) would be the perfect candy book.  If you’ve been here any amount of time, you know romance isn’t my genre.  I’ve never read anything else by Armas, and Tessa Bailey’s blurb on the cover means nothing to me. In short, my opinion on this book may mean nothing to you.  (Abby Jimenez and Talia Hibbert have made me realize I do enjoy certain romance books – but this is not that.)

Adalyn Reyes has pretty serious daddy issues.  Because of this, she’s pretty prickly. She’s been sent to North Carolina to manage a local little league soccer team that her father’s MSL team is sponsoring after a viral fall from grace when she decapitated the team’s mascot. Cameron Caldani is a retired professional goalkeeper who is hiding out in North Carolina after his retirement. He’s been convinced to coach the team by the town’s quirky mayor who knows him through a previous relationship with another soccer player. He’s a tough exterior but soft inside cinnamon roll.

Why Adalyn attacked the mascot, while a pretty serious plot point, is ridiculous. Why Cameron retired and is hiding out in NC, is also ridiculous. If both reasons had been further fleshed out and the characters built up more, it wouldn’t be ridiculous.  Disappointing execution.

It was also frustrating to see the actual soccer team and their journey to a championship take a backseat to goat yoga, a barbeque, and sexual tension that seems hellbent on devouring any substance the novel could have had.  SHE DOESN’T EVEN GO TO THE CHAMPIONSHIP GAME! Not to mention the overuse of “darling” and “deadpanned.”

It’s cute on a surface level, and if you don’t think about it too hard (or at all), you’ll probably enjoy it.  It’s mindless candy that gets a little bit spicy at the end, but you don’t really want another piece once you finish.  (And that is OK if that’s what you like.) But if you’re looking for Mighty Ducks or Hart of Dixie or even Part of Your World – you’re not going to get it here, but you will get a tattooed athlete growling “good job” to a sexually frustrated woman who craves praise.

HOW TO BUILD A BOAT – Elaine Feeney

“Cross imaginary boundaries, let go throw paint, sing cut a tree and empty it out, plant again find something hard but delicate, watch spaces for tension, be near it, but not in it, think. Design, redesign, build from what you have, you have so much already.”

My thoughts on this year’s Booker longlist aren’t really a secret at this point – I’ve found it rather lackluster.  I realized today why that is when I finished Elaine Feeney’s How to Build a Boat (Vintage 2023); the majority of the books I’ve read thus far from the list are missing heart.  That is undeniably why I gravitated toward Western Lane and The Bee Sting, and why Feeny’s offering is head and shoulders above some of the other entries.  How to Build a Boat has a bruise and a heartbeat, and how she breathes.

Thirteen-year-old Jamie is neurodivergent, but it’s not really a plot point or the focus; Jamie is just Jamie, and the people he lets in are the people who just let him be Jamie.  There are some issues with the head of the school, Father Faulks (who is the true villain of the story), as well as some other students, but it’s not the singular trait that carries his character development.

Jamie’s teacher, Tess, is also neurodivergent.  It’s not as obvious with Tess, but it is there.  She is also struggling with her mental health, infertility, failing marriage, and growing attraction to the rough and ready shop teacher, Tadhg Foley.  Tadhg has his own demons, but it’s Tadhg who brings Jamie into the shop and convinces him that the Perpetual Motion Machine that he wants to build, that he thinks can bring him closer to his dead mom, should be a boat.  And the building of this boat is healing for not just the three of them, but all who join in the efforts.  Including Jamie’s father.

The Epilogue of the novel showcases Feeney’s prowess as a poet; it’s beautiful and in constant motion, like a boat on the water or a mother’s lullaby.

Read this book.

Booker count: 9 of 13

**One of the 2023 judges is a Shakespeare scholar. I’ve decided to keep track of the novels that name drop Shakespeare or his works.  Jamie loves a good Shakespearian insult and Hamlet makes an appearance, so this is 6 of 9.

 

STUDY FOR OBEDIENCE – Sarah Bernstein

“November brought the trouble.”

In continuing with the rather lackluster 2023 Booker Prize longlist, I read Sarah Bernstein’s Study for Obedience (Knopf 2023). The novel was shortlisted for the prize, and the winner will be announced in a few weeks. (I’m still rooting for Western Lane.) While Berstein’s slim offering is well-written and interesting, it just not the type of novel that floats my boat.

Channeling Shirley Jackson, Bernstein weaves a gothic horror that is as unsettling as it is unassuming. An unnamed female narrator has gone to a country from which her ancestors were forced to flee to assist her oldest brother after his wife and children have left him.  (Based on the breed of dog being a Carpathian Shepherd, it’s likely Romania.) She stresses that her entire life has been that of obedience to those around her – her siblings, her coworkers, etc.   She is an unreliable narrator who I thought for a bit was actually death or the devil, but the reader gets snippets of what her life was like and why thoughts of dying are always on her mind.

Despite the country being a homeland for her and her family, she is an outsider, and the locals are suspicious of her. Since her arrival, bad things have been happening, and they blame her for them. It’s an interesting depiction of antisemitism laced with survivor’s guilt and generational trauma. There are also some interesting things that happen relating to the brother, and this is supposed to be his story. In quick snippets, our narrator tells us the trouble he got in as a teen involving videos taken of young girls who did not consent.  She also hints at the liberties he took with her, including forcing her to undress in front of him her entire life.

The sinister nature of the novel reveals itself fully as the narrator begins to “care” for her ailing brother; the sicker he gets, the more powerful and self-assured she becomes. I had no clue what the novel was about, but the dead bird on the cover should have warned me.  It is the most “different” book on the 2023 longlist that I’ve read to date, but it still oozes Booker type.

If you like gothic horror on a meta fiction level, give it a read.

Booker count: 8 of 13.

TRUE HISTORY OF THE KELLY GANG – Peter Carey

Next installment of Tommi Reads the World – still in the As.

Country: Australia
Title: True History of the Kelly Gang
Author: Peter Carey
Language: English
Translator: N/A
Publisher: Alred A. Knopf (2001)


“Wait to see what more there is to hear my daughter for in the end we poor uneducated people will all be made noble in the fire.”

Peter Carey’s Booker Prize winning True History of the Kelly Gang is a fictionalized account of the infamous Ned Kelly, a bushranger who reached folk hero status. My knowledge of Ned Kelly was limited to having heard Johnny Cash sing about him – “Ned Kelly took the blame. Ned Kelly won the fame. Ned brought the shame. And then Ned Kelly hanged.” I wonder if I’d known more about the Kelly Gang if the novel would have hit differently – I think it’s likely that framework would have resulted in five stars.  But it came in at four – and here is my adjectival review.

The novel, which is Faulkner meets Dickens meets Larry McMurtry (Ned Kelly reminds me a bit of Jake Spoon) meets Robin Hood, has a very distinctive voice that took me a bit longer to hear, but once I caught the voice and the rhythm, I was hooked; from birth to the noose, I fell in love with Ned Kelly. (And that was before I even saw his picture. Whew, but he was rather attractive.)

Ned’s Irish father was sent to Van Diemen’s Land to serve time for stealing pigs.  He married Ned’s mother after serving his sentence.  He dies when Ned is 12. After his father dies, Ned’s mother does what she has to do to provide for her children – she becomes a bootlegger who invites numerous men into her bed.  (Much to Ned’s dismay.) She indentures Ned to one of her bedmates when Ned is 15 – Harry Power is a bushranger on the run from the law and his relationship with young Ned is a complicated one.  (Much like the relationship between Ned and his mother.)

Ned refuses to turn on anyone, often shouldering the blame instead of betraying someone who would betray him with the flash of a coin.  “…we learned the traitors better than the saints… I could not betray him.”  The “him” in this instance is Harry Power, but the scenario repeats itself often.  Ned’s loyalty, charm and grit make him beloved to his own, but hated by authorities; by the time he’s 26, he’s the most wanted man in Victoria.  He is eventually captured and hanged – but the story of Ned Kelly didn’t die dangling from a rope, as evident by the hold it still has.

It’s not an “easy” read and it takes a minute or two to adjust to the writing style and voice, but it’s worth it.

Read this book.

THE HOUSE OF DOORS – Tan Twan Eng

“Where does a story begin, Willie?” I asked.
  For a while he did not say anything. Then he shifted in his chair.  “Where does a wave on the ocean begin?” he said. “Where does it form a welt on the skin of the sea, to swell and expand and rush towards shore?”
 “I want to tell you a story, Willie,” I said.

I’m still reading the 2023 Booker longlist, and I remain rather unimpressed with the selections; the overwhelming majority of those I’ve read are simply “just okay.”  (Western Lane is my hopeful to win.)  They’re perfectly fine, but the books nominated for the Booker shouldn’t be just “perfectly fine.”  Tan Twan Eng’s The House of Doors (Bloomsbury 2023) falls into that lukewarm “perfectly fine” category. Eng is no stranger to the Booker prize; this is his third time on the longlist, and he was a judge of the 2023 Booker International prize. He can certainly write, and this novel does have that “Booker” quality, but I couldn’t help but draw comparisons with Tom Crewe’s The New Life – in my opinion, a better selection for the prize. Crewe’s novel has similar themes, is also based on historical events and people, and soars where The House of Doors flounders.

                In 1921, Lesley Hamlyn is living at Cassowary House on the Straits Settlement of Penang when her husband’s old friend, none other than famed author Somerset Maugham, comes for an extended visit.  “Willie,” as they call him, brings his young and attractive assistant, Gerald. Lesley is quite disturbed to realize they are “homosexuals,” a word she can barely bring herself to say. What transpires is a fictional account of how Maugham was inspired to write The Casuarina Tree, a collection of short stories set in the Federated Malay states during the 1920s.

                Lesley tells Willie about her best friend, Ethel, who had been charged with murder after killing a man she’d accused of trying to rape her. Ethel’s trial in Kuala Lumpur in 1911 actually happened and was quite the tantalizing drama. Lesley also talks about her relationship with the revolutionary Dr. Sun Yat Sen (also a real figure). Eng plays with the timeline so that the trial and Dr. Sun Yat Sen being in Malay all happen at the same time.  Lesley also reveals her husband’s infidelity and sexuality as well as her own affair.

                The novel should be a riveting ride of court room drama, colonialism, scandal, revolution, love, lust and duty.  But it takes forever to get the heart of the story.  Lesley is boring, unlikeable, and unauthentic. Gerald is a caricature.  Absolutely beautiful language, but eh.

Booker count: 7 of 13.

**One of the 2023 judges is a Shakespeare scholar. I’ve decided to keep track of the novels that name drop Shakespeare or his works.  Willie notices Robert’s Shakespeare collection, making this 5 of 7.

THE SANDCASTLE GIRLS – Chris Bohjalian

Next installment of Tommi Reads the World – still in the As.

Country: Armenia
Title: The Sandcastle Girls
Author: Chris Bohjalian
Language: English
Translator: N/A
Publisher: Doubleday (2012), First Vintage Contemporaries Edition (2013)

“But history does matter. There is a line connecting the Armenians and the Jews and the Cambodians and the Bosnians and the Rwandans. There are obviously more, but, really, how much genocide can one sentence handle? You get the point.  Besides, my grandparents’ story deserves to be told, regardless of their nationalities.”

This one may be a bit of a cheat as it is written by a rather prominent American author.  (I read Midwives over 20 years ago.)  But while American, Chris Bojalian is also Armenian, and his Armenian grandparents, survivors of the Armenian genocide, are the voices in this historical novel of love, resilience, brutality, and the secrets and scars a family carry.

I don’t usually care for novels about authors and their writing process, but Laura’s journey through her grandparents’ history and her determination to tell their story didn’t bother me – perhaps because I didn’t hear her voice when we stepped back in time to 1915 Aleppo where Elizabeth, her wealthy, white grandmother, has arrived to bring food and medical aid to the refugees of the Armenian Genocide.  Elizabeth, bold and fierce with a naïve strength, falls in love with Armen, an Armenian engineer who has lost his wife and infant daughter.

Another benefit of having Laura’s present view as she uncovers the past is the realization that she knew nothing of the history, had no real grasp as to why it was such a big deal when her first love was a young Turkish boy, mirrors the realization of a reader who like Laura, might not even be able to find Armenia on the map let alone know the horrors faced.  Structurally, I find it a success.

Story wise, it’s also an expected success.  Bohjalian writes in a familiar and comforting style that is extremely palatable.   I stand by my decision that this counts as Armenian literature – an Armenian American is telling a story inspired by the resilience and survival of his own grandparents.

Read this book.

*Please recommend any Armenian novels, translated into English, that you have enjoyed! *