THE COURSE OF LOVE by Alain de Botton

At least the reader of this novel doesn’t have to deal with multiple unidentified narrators or a wacky timeline.  However, the author interrupts the narrative on almost every page with observations about romantic or marital love.  I don’t think I would have missed anything if I had skipped these snippets, but I realize that they are integral to the author’s intentions.  The storyline involves Rabih and Kirsten, both of whom lost a parent at a young age.  Rabih’s mother died of cancer, and Kirsten’s father walked out on Kirsten and her mother.  Consequently, they have a parental loss in common, but illness and abandonment bring very different insecurities to the victims, and the aggrieved children therefore have very different coping mechanisms that linger into their adult lives.  In any case, Rabih and Kirsten fall in love and get married, and this book seeks to explore the mundane and sometimes boring aspects of marriage rather than the exhilaration of the initial meeting and courtship.  The author examines both partners, but primarily Rabih, and their approach to marriage and raising a family, with all the required compromises, challenges, and division of labor.  Although I was not overly fond of the author’s frequent musings on the relationship, I did find the writings of a marriage counselor somewhat enlightening as to why Rabih and Kirsten struggle in their relationship, despite their obvious love for one another.  I kept expecting something drastic to happen, but the author did not have that in mind here.  This is not a book about human tragedy.  Rather, the author offers some philosophical commentary on the millions of ordinary people who make up this world.

NOWHERE MAN by Alexsandar Hemon

This book was more incomprehensible than incomparable, if you ask me.  It has several first person narrators, none of whom are the primary character, a Bosnian named Josef Pronek.  We witness several stages of Pronek’s life in no particular order, including his attendance of an ESL program in Chicago, his college days in the Ukraine, his time in the Bosnian army, his work in Chicago as a door-to-door solicitor for Greenpeace, and a stint as process server to another Yugoslavian.  He is fortunately in the U.S. during the war between the Croats and the Serbs, but his parents are still there, and his mother barely avoids being hit by a bomb.  The last section is the weirdest, as it concerns a Captain Pick who lived in Shanghai during WWII but also used the name Joseph Pronek.  What is that supposed to mean?  Was he our Josef’s father or a previous incarnation or not related in any way?  And does Greenpeace really solicit donations door-to-door?  This was perhaps the most entertaining section, as Pronek gives himself a new identity and nationality at each home he visits.  The title comes from the Beatles song, since at one point he and his buddy in Bosnia form a cover band that performs Beatles songs (in English), which then morphs into a blues band in which he passes himself off as “Blind” Josef Pronek.  This kaleidoscope of adventures may be semi-autobiographical in its juxtaposition of the comical and the doleful, but I would have preferred a more conventional rendering.

ANNIHILATION by Jeff VanderMeer

I liked this book, but did I like it enough to read the other two books in the trilogy?  Probably not.  Four women, identified only by their occupations, have come to Area X as the twelfth expedition there.  The biologist is the narrator whose husband was part of the previous expedition but returned home as a shell of his former self.  Area X is the site of an environmental contamination where things become weirder and weirder as the novel progresses.  There are two main landmarks—an underground tower that some view as a tunnel and a lighthouse.  Both are very spooky in their own way, but the other members of the expedition are even scarier--an anthropologist, a psychologist, and a surveyor.  The psychologist is the obvious leader, as she has the power to hypnotize the other three into doing her bidding.  Where exactly is Area X?  What is the purpose of all these expeditions?  Why is the tower/tunnel not on the maps?  What happens when you cross the border into and out of Area X?  We don’t know the answer to this last question because everyone on this expedition, except presumably the psychologist, was hypnotized for the border crossing.  Certainly these questions are all teasers for the books to come, but I’m not sure if I care.  The movie might be worth watching, though.

BEFORE WE WERE YOURS by Lisa Wingate

The subject matter of this book is so disturbing that it tarnished my opinion of it to some degree.  This novel addresses a time in Memphis history in which representatives of the Tennessee Children’s Home Society were kidnapping children and selling them to wealthy parents who could not conceive.  If these abductions themselves weren’t bad enough, the children were then mistreated while awaiting their new homes.  Corruption and greed are bad enough, but the destruction of families for financial gain is just unspeakably horrendous.  The author imagines a family in the 1930s that lives on a shantyboat on the Mississippi River.  They don’t have much, but they have love and they have each other.  When the father has to take his pregnant wife to a Memphis hospital to deliver twins, the “authorities” whisk away the other five children to an abusive orphanage.  The story of their plight alternates with the present-day story of Avery Stafford, a young attorney who plans to follow her aging father into politics.  A chance encounter with a woman in a nursing home alerts Avery to the possibility of a family secret that she feels driven to unearth.  As the book progresses, Avery begins to reevaluate the life she has chosen for herself, especially after she meets a handsome real estate agent.  Call me shallow, but I kept looking forward to Avery’s chapters, because really the agony of the shantyboat kids, particularly the oldest, is almost too heartbreaking to bear.  The prose in this novel is adequate but not special, and the book is full of unlikely coincidences, but it moved me anyway.

CALEB'S CROSSING by Geraldine Brooks

Historical fiction writers should take a few pointers from Geraldine Brooks.   I like Alice Hoffman’s works, except for her historical fiction, which bores me to tears.  And Hillary Mantel?  Ditto.  This novel may be more fictional than historical, as Brooks imagines the life of a little known Native American named Caleb who graduated from Harvard in the late 1600s.  She also makes the wise choice of narrating from the point of view of Bethia Mayfield, a fictional character who befriends Caleb, as they both seek to know more about one another’s culture.  The storyline and writing are both excellent, and Brooks injects just enough early American language to make Bethia’s voice seem authentic without being challenging to read.   Although the novel has a lot to say about race relations, from an educational standpoint, Bethia’s plight is even worse than Caleb’s, as he has a chance at higher learning, whereas she as a woman has none.  In her own home and later as a scullery maid at the college, she learns Latin and Greek solely by eavesdropping.  Her brother is a lackluster student with no aptitude for languages, but Bethia, unbeknownst to her family, masters Caleb’s language as well.  The only learning that she is allowed to pursue is midwifery and herbal healing.  She does not, however, have to face the ostracism and bigotry that Caleb does.  They both do have to choose between family and opportunity, but Caleb’s choice strikes his people as a betrayal, even as most of the white men refuse to accept him fully.  He truly has to make his own way alone.