The Star Online: Lifestyle: Bookshelf
The Star Online: Lifestyle: Bookshelf |
| Posted: 24 Feb 2013 01:46 AM PST Back To Blood MAKE no mistake about it, this is one large brick of a book. But if the thought of 700+ pages puts you off, then feel comforted by the fact that the print is large and the lines well spaced. That and the fact that this a rolling roller-coaster of a ride from the moment the book opens to its final page. Tom Wolfe is best known as one of the leading lights of a movement that became known as the new journalism. Gone was the traditional persona of the journalist as a dispassionate and uninvolved recorder of events, and in its place was a real attempt to recreate the story and give the reader a feeling of the events and people involved. Stylistically, a number of devices more usually associated with literary texts were employed, such as dialogue and scene by scene reconstructions. Journalistic fact and literary fiction were edging closer together. Wolfe has always been regarded as an acute commentator on society, nowhere more so than in that chronicle of 1980s New York greed and disgust, The Bonfire Of The Vanities. "There is a saying," he has offered in interview, "that New York is about money, Washington is about power and Miami is about sex", a comment that brings us nicely to his latest book, Back To Blood, which is set in Miami and is not entirely about sex but is very noticeably about race. Miami is not unique in being a city with a huge racial mix but is certainly unusual in the extent of it. Policed in large part by émigré Cubans with a Hispanic mayor and a black police chief, Miami is not the usual American city. Puerto Ricans, West Indians, Haitians, Dominicans, Cubans, Columbians, Senegalese, Russians and still more races and nationalities walk the streets of the city and people the pages of the novel. And to a fair extent, they all revert to their race when pushed, or, as the title has it, go back to blood. Most things in this book ultimately do. Wolfe runs a number of plot lines simultaneously. One of the first concerns Nestor Comacho, a cop of Cuban origin whose differences from his Americano colleagues are played up from the start. Speeding across the harbour waters, Nestor's muscle-toned body is a stark contrast to the more formless bulk of his colleagues. Their mission is to rescue a man who has got himself stuck at the top of a boat's mast. Nestor volunteers to go up and get him down and chooses to do so by climbing the rope hand-over-hand, as he does in his gym workouts. In front of a noisy crowd he reaches the top of the mast and then caps his performance by wrapping his legs around the man's waist and lowering him to the ground, once again going hand-over-hand. It is a prodigious feat of strength and the crowd loves it. Unfortunately for Nestor, his family, his girlfriend and his community don't. It turns out that the man he has rescued is a Cuban refugee seeking asylum. The rules are that he will be granted asylum only if his feet touch American soil. As he has been lowered down to ground level and put back on a boat, he will now be deported. Nestor goes from hero to villain in one move, despised by his own people. If it's Cubans against American law, there is no question who the Cuban community will side with: back to blood. It is a theme that emerges again and again in the book, regardless of the ethnic and national origins of the characters involved. You will not get far into a Tom Wolfe novel without having to come to terms with his style. His writing has an exuberance and a loudness like no-one else's. Exclamation marks abound and capital letters blaze across the page. This is language that shouts. It is coupled with linguistic pyrotechnics of all kinds. If literary styles can be likened to an orchestra then Wolfe resides almost entirely in the brass section. There is little here that is subtle, nothing that is understated. It is megaphone prose that clamours for attention – and to a large degree gets it. Back To Blood is a good read. Wolfe is a strong storyteller and if you can tolerate its over-the-top exuberance, the writing will sweep you away. The stories he tells here combine at some level to give us a portrait of a city in all its turmoil while largely ignoring the subtleties of the heart and mind that constitute most people's inner lives. There is plenty of power, plenty of money and plenty of sex. To the charge that Wolfe's world has something of a cartoon quality about it I would concur, but there are other rewards in this instance that make Back To Blood an eminently entertaining and thoroughly worthwhile read. |
| Posted: 24 Feb 2013 12:37 AM PST I LOVE matryoshka dolls, those Russian dolls of decreasing size that fit one inside the other; Chinese boxes, and any nested containers, including those colourful plastic ones that are a staple of most modern playrooms. The concept appeals to me because it's practical and neat. However, there is also that suggestion of complexity, of layers, of stories told from different points of view, of narratives within narratives. Open This Little Book, by Jesse Klausmeier with illustrations by Suzy Lee, is a book within a book within a book within another book ... where does it end? With yet another book, of course. Open the picture book and the purple title page appears to be the cover of smaller book. Turn the page and you see another book cover, this time a red, black-spotted one. You are asked to open this Little Red Book, and read about a ladybug who's drinking tea while reading her Little Green Book. The green book, with its rain-splashed lilipad-patterned cover, is about a frog whose orange, carrot-dotted book is about a rabbit who reads a book with a honeycomb patterns on its cover. This one's about a bear and his Little Blue Book about a big blue giant who struggles to open her Little Rainbow Book, which is about a ladybug, frog, rabbit, bear, and giant and the books they love. The books are now all open and the different coloured covers are a gorgeous, layered, middle-page spread. Now you turn each "cover" to close each book, and once the purple book is shut, you are encouraged to open another book. The illustration on the right is certainly inspiring, showing various animals and a little girl and boy reading under a shady book-shelf tree. If you're looking for a message, it's surely that, with reading, the fun never ends, and that every page-turn leads to further enjoyment, magic, drama, knowledge, and so on and on. The animals in the books within the book are linked by pages, stories and a love for books and reading. Books, Klausmeier and Lee seem to say, are our friends. They keep us company. They entertain us. They offer comfort and insights and advice. They take us on travels and adventures. Lee's illustrations are playful, full of relaxed humour, like sketches in a notebook. Smudgy primary colours, applied in a free, vigorous style, make the pictures pop and move and give the book the look of something handmade and unique. Indeed, the whole book is an ode to book arts and will delight those who don't just love to read but also revel in the smell and feel of a book. For those who enjoy making books, Open This Little Book will inspire ideas. And, as a present, this is one of those gifts that will just keep on giving. Daphne Lee reads to wonder and wander, be amazed and amused, horrified and heartened and inspired and comforted. She wishes more people will try it too. Speak to her at star2@thestar.com.my and check out her blog at daphne.blogs.com/books. |
| Posted: 24 Feb 2013 12:35 AM PST This is very thoroughly researched historical fiction that is never weighed down by the details. The Last Runaway TRACY Chevalier, best known for The Girl With A Pearl Earring – which became an international bestseller and a Hollywood film – sets the seventh of her historical novels in her native America. The Last Runaway, set in the 1850s, takes a look at the country, pre-Civil War. It deals with the legacy of slavery, and in particular what came to be known as the Underground Railway, an escape route set up to help slaves make their way to Canada where they could be free. The "railway" comprised safe houses or "depots" where runaways could find shelter and food. Although, as Chevalier notes on her website, the number of slaves escaping this way was not great, the very fact that the "railway" existed at all must have threatened slave owners and appeared to undermine the whole economy. After a broken engagement, Quaker Honor Bright leaves England makes her way to America and a new life in Wellington in Ohio. There, she is taken in and befriended by the plain spoken milliner, Belle Mills. Honor wins her respect because of her skill with a needle, and Belle soon puts her to work helping to decorate hats and make bonnets. But Honor soon realises that the only option open to her is to marry, and she accepts the proposal of Jack Haymaker, whose family own a thriving farm nearby. Honor must learn to adapt to her new environment. Everything is different in her adopted country, from the landscape with its large open fields and forbidding woods, to the weather with its extremes of summer heat and winter cold. But the most difficult adjustment she must make is to fit in with the small-minded local community and the family into which she has married. Things only get worse as she becomes aware of the plight of runaway slaves passing through Ohio (which is a "free" state that does not practise slavery) on their way to Canada and their freedom. Honor finds herself personally involved when a fugitive slave appears in the yard one day. Soon she is hiding food and directing slaves to the next town where they can find safety. Even though Quakers are against slavery on principle, her husband and his family forbid her from helping any more runaway slaves. The passage of the Fugitive Law means that there are dire penalties for harbouring them, something the Haymakers know only too well. Honor is left in no doubt that if she obeys her conscience, she is imperilling those she lives among. Furthermore, she risks being ostracized from the Quaker community and losing all rights to her own child if she persists. Compounding the moral dilemma is the fact that Quakers are not supposed to tell lies, but Honor realises that sometimes lies, or at least evasions, are needed to prevent greater injustice. These dilemmas are at the heart of the story, and Honor realises that there just are no easy answers. Complicating matters more are Honor's feelings towards Donavan, Belle's brother who is a bounty hunter looking for slaves. The sexual tension is palpable, and their scenes together are some of the most compelling in the book. It's a pity that Jack Haymaker is so colourless in comparison. In Honor Bright, Chevalier has created a heroine who grows and evolves to take charge of her own destiny. Ironically, she is as much a runaway in a metaphorical sense as the slaves that she helps. The book is very thoroughly researched yet the historical background never weighs down the narrative. Indeed, The Last Runaway is a page-turning piece of fiction, and its great strength is in the very real sense of period and place that Chevalier creates, particularly in the domestic details. Particularly enjoyable are her descriptions of the traditional art of quilt-making, which serves as a motif throughout the book. |
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