From a Low and Quiet Sea

Irish novelist Donal Ryan's latest work is a quietly moving story told in three separate narratives. First we meet Farouk, a physician, who has just immigrated from war-torn Syria to Ireland and become separated from his wife during the dangerous sea crossing. He is morose and finding it difficult to adjust to life in a new and foreign place. The second man we meet, Lampy, is a grouchy young man who seems unlucky in life. He lives with his mother and grandfather, drives a bus for a nursing home, and has suffered a lot of rejection. The last narrator, James, has led a shifty, dishonest life as an accountant, and now appears to be trying to come to terms with his faults and crimes and to seek comfort and forgiveness. Each of the narratives is compelling and thoughtful, but seemingly unconnected. Ryan brings them together with a smash at the end. Highly recommended for those who enjoy literary fiction with complicated characters.

Kelly Currie

The Things They Carried

The New York Times blurb on the front of the reissued paperback of Tim O'Brien's classic book about the Vietnam War reads, "A marvel of storytelling...a vital, important book--a book that matters not only to the reader interested in Vietnam, but to anyone interested in the craft of writing as well." O'Brien has told his own war story in fictionalized form, in a series of interconnected short pieces. It is brilliant. He says at one point, "If at the end of a war story you feel uplifted ... you have been made the victim of a very old and terrible lie." Many authors have written of their war experiences, whether it be in WWII, Vietnam, or the more modern battlegrounds of Iraq and Afghanistan. Very few of those have the ability to capture the nuances and make you feel the story deeply in the pit of your stomach. O'Brien has that talent. In a tender balancing act, he writes of the beauty of the jungle, the exhilaration of camaraderie, while also recording the brutality of war. O'Brien was not confident that our country should be at war in Vietnam, and when drafted, he toyed with the idea of running for the Canadian border from his home in Minnesota. He struggled deeply, thinking that running would be the bravest thing he could do. Instead, he says what drove him to report for duty as ordered was "hot, stupid shame." He feared exile more than he feared war. The bravest thing, in the end, was observing, participating in, and recording the mundane and the misery of being a soldier in that time and place. Highly recommended.

Kelly Currie

Song of Achilles and Circe by Madeline Miller

    Madeline Miller's remarkable way of retelling Homer's The Iliad and The Odyssey was definitely bound to be a recipe for success. I loved every ingredient (element) in these books.  Love, betrayal, enchantment, adventure, jealousy, complex relationships, and a dash of vengeance.  This isn't your four-ingredient recipe that you can find at your local grocery store.  No, no this is a "magnifique" three-star deal.  Song of Achilles alone took Miller ten years to write and received the Orange Prize for fiction, which is the United Kingdom's most prestigious literary prize. After reading this enchanting tale, I had to read her second novel, Circe.  

   The Song of Achilles is from the perspective of Patroclus.  The book begins with Patroclus being exiled for killing a boy. He is then sent to Phthia to be fostered by its king, Peleus.  This is where he meets Achilles, the perfect, handsome, and fierce demi-god. The story continues throughout their teenage years and into the war with the Trojans.  When Patroclus poses as Achilles to save the demi-god's life, he tragically loses his own--in a gruesome, horrid, and agonizing painful death. Losing Patroclus plunges Achilles into a deep depression, and the soldiers believe he has lost his mind.  As the Fates said, the war will be won by the death of Achilles.

“And perhaps it is the greater grief, after all, to be left on earth when another is gone.” 

-Madeline Miller, The Song of Achilles

     Circe is only a minor character in Homer's The Odyssey, so creating an entire novel about the sea goddess or nymph poses a challenge. The greatest challenge for Miller may have been to keep the storyline coherent enough for her readers. The novel spans hundreds of years because Circe is immortal.

     Circe was born more human-like than god-like. She isn't vicious enough to be a goddess.  She was an outcast and every Titan and Olympian made it quite clear to her. She did, however, possess a valuable power: witchcraft.  When Circe turned the most beautiful sea goddess, Scylla, into a man-eating beast and the man she loved into a god, she was banished to the deserted island of Aiaia. Throughout her life, she discovered relationships, love, and motherhood.

     Both The Song of Achilles and Circe contain themes of abuse, relationships, love, sacrifice, and dealing with one's emotions. Achilles and Circe had to fend for themselves and learn through hardships. I have to admit that as I was reading I fell in love with these characters and found myself siding with them, even though I didn't agree with some of their actions. Very detailed and gripping!

  "He was quiet a long time. 'You are wise,' he said. 'If it is so,' I said, 'it is only because I have been fool enough for a hundred lifetimes.'"

-Madeline Miller, Circe

~Dani Green 

The Confusion of Languages

This is the story of a friendship gone awry, a culture clash, and the heartbreaking reality of unintended consequences. Cassandra and her husband Dan are living in Amman, Jordan, where he is a military officer stationed at the U.S. Embassy. They are childless but have been trying unsuccessfully for years to change that situation, and this has put a strain on their relationship and their interactions with others. Cassie feels unmoored and unloved and without friends. Into the lives of this couple in crisis appear Crick, Margaret, and their infant son Mather. Crick has been newly assigned to the Embassy, and Cassie and Dan are their welcome committee, tasked with helping them acclimate to life in Jordan. Cassie is a strict rule-follower, a no-nonsense person who strives to pass on her knowledge and fears to Margaret. And she is desperate for a friend, someone with whom she can share confidences. Margaret will have none of it. She likes Cassie but is a free spirit, and refuses to adhere to Cassie's (and the Embassy's) warnings about wearing moderate dress, going nowhere on your own, and refraining from talking to men other than her husband. While Dan and Crick are gone on assignment to Italy for several weeks, Margaret chafes at her "cage," and begins exploring Jordan and making Jordanian friends. Cassie's jealousy and her genuine fear for Margaret lead her to take action that ultimately backfires, bringing heartbreak and loss to all of them. Siobhan Fallon is a master at revealing the subtleties and frailties of human behavior. Highly recommended for readers interested in literary fiction, the Middle East, and life in the military.

Kelly Currie

Eternal Life by Dara Horn

    I have often wondered what it would be like to live an immortal life. After reading The Outcasts of Time by Ian Mortimer and now Dara Horn's, Eternal Life, I am certainly glad that I do not. Throughout the book, Dana examines the very essence of life. Dana illustrates the extremes of parental love, and the downfalls of eternal life.

     Rachel Azaria cannot die. She made a vow to forgo physical death to save her son. Rachel will go through hundreds of marriages, and generations of children. She will see them live, and she will see them die. When people start getting suspicious, she throws herself into a fire only to find herself, eighteen years old, in an unknown place just to start all over again.  

     However, she is not alone in this eternal journey, the father of her first son, Elazar, took the same spiritual bargain. Although their relationship is not what I consider healthy, they do love each other profoundly.

As the years progress, so does science, and hiding is not so easy for Rachel and Elazar.  To make matters even more complicated, her granddaughter, Hannah, is a scientist who studies and manipulates DNA. She is on the verge of discovering how to slow down the aging process. Hannah notices that her grandmother is aging phenomenally well, and asks if she could have a sample of her blood. Rachel grows furious at the request, and turns down the offer.  Surreptitiously, Hannah took a strand of Rachel's hair and discovers that Rachel's DNA reveals her at the age of eighteen! Rachel has no choice but to tell Hannah the truth.

All I can say is, after 2,000 years of living, I sympathize with Rachel's desire to finally die. This book will take you on an emotional roller coaster ride. It is an exceptional read, and a real page-turner. It had me biting my nails in anticipation.

“the absolute loneliness, the bottomless homesick loneliness of years upon years of lies, the deep cold void of a loneliness no mortal can imagine.”

~Dana Horn, Eternal Life

~Dani

Little Fires Everywhere

I don't give too many five-star reviews, but this one from Celeste Ng earned a very definite five stars from me on Goodreads. Little Fires Everywhere is something special. And the title fits perfectly, both literally and figuratively. Life in Shaker Heights for the families at the heart of this story is a series of little fires that start small and then join and grow to consume their lives. Like a fire's "multiple points of origin," each character contributes to the conflagration in his or her own way. The Richardson family is one of the wealthy scions--and longtime residents--of the Shaker Heights community. Mia Warren and her daughter Pearl live a very different lifestyle, a nomadic life, a path that leads them to Shaker Heights and a rental property owned by the Richardsons. Ng has a way of simply and clearly describing each of these characters in such a way that you feel connected intimately to the story. There are no villains or heroes, just ordinary people. And having an overall view of the goings-on enables you to see the disaster as it builds and entangles them. And there is not just one heart of the story. Ng deftly weaves in the complex topics of art and photography, cross-cultural adoption, teenage pregnancy, poverty, wealth, parenting...and big life choices. A stellar book with fascinating characters and a potent storyline. Highly recommended.

Kelly Currie

Difficult Women by Roxane Gay

Roxane Gay dedicates this collection of short stories "for difficult women, who should be celebrated for their very nature." While it remains unclear what qualifications a woman must meet to be dubbed a "difficult woman," that is a term many of us have heard at least a handful of times in our lives. Perhaps this is why I found the short stories in this collection so personal, relatable, and emotional while at the same time shocking, distant, and sometimes repulsive. These stories delve into the lives and inner workings of a vast cross-section of those classified as "difficult women."

Gay gives us these women, and the other characters who fill the spaces of their lives, all at once. From the sisters recovering from a childhood nightmare or the woman married to her true love's evil twin, to the girl who grew up a part of her father's affair or the surprisingly diverse members of a gated Floridian community, the reader is dropped into the middle of these stories and brought up to speed throughout. It's disorienting at first, familiarizing yourself with your new host and realizing very quickly that something is...off. There is always some behavior or thought process the reader just can't quite understand, something difficult about this woman. By the time the reader has watched the scene play out and gotten a peek behind the curtain, the lines that would define this character to the outside observer are too blurry to even recognize. 

I made a resolution at the beginning of this year to read more materials about people and situations I don't understand, or don't think I could personally relate to. Surprisingly, this collection fit that bill. Though at first glace I thought I couldn't relate to many of these characters, by the end of their stories I either saw myself in them or at the very least understood why I couldn't. I recommend this collection to any woman who has been called "difficult," as well as any person who knows someone who has. If you approach it with an open mind, it can certainly open your eyes as well.