"When the Emperor Was Divine," by Julie Otsuka

I just finished a small but very powerful novel about the interning of Japanese Americans during World War II. "When the Emperor Was Divine" (Anchor, 2002) is a still, compressed, distilled telling of the story of one Berkeley family whose lives were turned upside down by the war and its accompanying terribly unjust treatment of those of Japanese ancestry in the U.S. The story is told from the points of view of each of the family members: the mother, the daughter, the son, and the father. The father is taken away from the family home in his bathrobe and slippers (the indelible image remembered by his children as so unfair to their dignified father); soon after, the mother and children are evacuated, first to the horse stables of Tanforan, near San Francisco, and then to an internment camp in the flat and dusty Utah desert. The author never raises her voice, but just lets readers hear her characters in their quiet detailing of what their new lives are like, and how they feel. The very quietness and compression of the telling is what gives this book such power, such descriptive and emotional force. Although we have all learned about and read about this terrible time in American history, this book makes it more real and thus even more intolerable than any other publication I have seen. Highly recommended.

"Range of Motion," by Elizabeth Berg

I have been reading Elizabeth Berg's novels on and off for years. Some may consider them second-rate, and/or "women's novels." And perhaps they are not at the highest literary level. But they are solid, they are craftswomanlike, they are readable, they are inspiring, they are moving, and they describe everyday women's lives, something that is still too rare. They have also won multiple awards. Recently, at my wonderful local library's monthly book sale (which I have posted about before), I picked up a copy of "Range of Motion" (Random House, 1995), one of Berg's earliest novels, which I thought I had read before but couldn't remember for sure. It is a short novel, a quick read, but very satisfying and moving. It tells the story of Lainey, whose beloved husband Jay is in a coma, and the way she visits him regularly and tries to remind him of their life together through talking to him, bringing their children to see him, playing music, bringing different scents for him to smell, and more. There are a couple of side stories, such as that of Lainey's neighbor and friend Alice who is so supportive of and helpful to her despite her own marital troubles, and that of Evie, the ghost of the former resident of Lainey's house, who visits to encourage Lainey. (Lainey knows she isn't "real" but still draws sustenance from her visits.) At times, Berg's writing is quite lovely in its particularity and honesty, and in its engagement with life as it is lived by many women.

"The Grief of Others," by Leah Hager Cohen

"The Grief of Others" (Riverhead, 2011), a novel by Leah Hager Cohen, is a vividly etched portrait of a family in trouble. John and Ricky Ryrie, their 13-year-old son Paul, and their 10-year-old daughter Biscuit are all mourning the loss of baby Simon, who was born with a fatal defect and died after just 57 hours of life. The central problem of the novel is not just this tragic loss, but the fact that none of the four family members can communicate their feelings with each other. Ricky is devastated but won't talk about it; John doesn't know how to reach her; Paul is suffering the baby's loss at the vulnerable time of early adolescence, and is being bullied at school; Biscuit lives in her own world, misses school, creates mourning rituals, and keeps having accidents. Into this scene comes pregnant 23-year-old Jess, John's seldom-seen daughter by a prior relationship, complicating matters further. Secrets abound. Semi-buried resentments regarding John's and Ricky's past disloyalties and compromises also rise to the surface, making communication and mutual support still more difficult. To me, the best limned and most appealing characters are Paul and Biscuit; they are each clear and believable unique individuals yet display universally understandable emotions; their pain is even more heartbreaking than that of their parents. Perhaps the greatest strength of the novel is the author's portrayal of the complexities often found within families and in their interactions, and the ways that even members of loving families can be sadly mystified by other family members. There is much pain in this novel, yet there is sweetness, connection, and even redemption as well.

Authors in Appreciation of Tea

I have written here (e.g., on 2/2/10) and elsewhere on the role of tea in literature. Today I would like to pass on some wonderful quotations on that topic from well-known authors. My source for these quotes? I have in my possession a small collection of coasters ("Quotesters," from Letterary Press) that I have reason to believe (in my family role as Santa's helper) will show up in my Christmas stocking next week. Of course to preserve all illusions, I should wait until after Christmas to pass on these quotes, but I am assuming my readers do not include anyone under six years old... Here are a few of those quotes, each of which I thoroughly relish:

-"There is a great deal of poetry and fine sentiment in a chest of tea." -- Ralph Waldo Emerson
-"Wouldn't it be dreadful to live in a country where they didn't have tea?" -- Noel Coward
-"I smile, of course, And go on drinking tea." -- T. S. Eliot
-"One sip of this will bathe the drooping spirits in delight, beyond the bliss of dreams." -- John Milton
-"There are few hours in life more agreeable than the hour dedicated to the ceremony known as afternoon tea." -- Henry James
-"You can never get a cup of tea large enough or a book long enough to suit me." -- C. S. Lewis

I dedicate this post to two dear friends: my late friend C. and my friend B., with each of whom I have shared dozens, perhaps hundreds, of cups of tea over the years.

"A Moveable Feast," by Ernest Hemingway

I have read several books and articles by and about Ernest Hemingway this past year or so, including re-reading "The Sun Also Rises" (see my post of 2/27/11) and reading Paula McLain's novel about Hemingway's first wife Hadley, titled "The Paris Wife" (see my post of 7/1/11). Now I have just re-read -- or actually listened to a books-on-CD reading of -- "A Moveable Feast," Hemingway's memoir about his time in Paris between 1921 and 1926, when he was a young writer just getting started on his fiction, and enjoying the pleasures of Paris, despite his poverty. He writes of the cafes and the bars where he ate, drank, wrote, and met friends, often other writers. He describes his interactions with such writers as Fitzgerald, Stein, Joyce, Ford Madox Ford, and Pound. The first time I read this book, many years ago, I just enjoyed reading about Paris and famous writers; the book is evocative and enjoyable, and I must admit the literary gossip was fun to read. I experienced some of these feelings this time as well, but I couldn't help noticing that under his "modest" self-presentation, Hemingway was happy to condescend to certain others and even present them in an unflattering light, under the guise of just telling what happened. Often he presents himself as the kind, helpful, and loyal friend, while slightly disparaging the other writers. He starts by praising Stein but ends by subtly running her down. Ford Madox Ford is portrayed as unpleasant and deluded. Fitzgerald is presented as pitiful, ruined by his wife, insecure sexually, and a hypochondriac. The scene in which Fitzgerald supposedly comes to Hemingway for sexual advice seems both unfair to Fitzgerald and self-serving on Hemingway's part. I still definitely enjoyed this book, and there is much to like about the portraits of Paris, writers, and the writer's life. I was just a lot more aware, this time, of the way the book was constructed to put Hemingway himself in a good light and others less so.

"The Angel Esmeralda: Nine Stories," by Don DeLillo

I must start by saying that I have not read any of Don DeLillo's acclaimed novels. Somehow they didn't sound like "my kind of" novels, although I would likely admire them in an abstract way. I thought of them as being among the the rather arid, experimental fictions that I mostly avoid. But something about the reviews of "The Angel Esmeralda: Nine Stories" (Scribner, 2011) made me decide to read it. The stories are much more accessible than I expected. But what floored me was that they do what the best fiction does: they create a cracklingly electric world, one both startingly original and yet hair-raisingly recognizable. Not all the stories made me feel this way, but the best of them did. "Midnight in Dostoevsky" and "Hammer and Sickle" are both mesmerizing. But the most amazing experience was reading the title story, "The Angel Esmeralda." Bleak, searing, gripping, incantatory are all adjectives that come to mind. The story features two elderly nuns, Gracie and Edgar, who regularly visit the worst blasted-out landscapes and tenements of the Bronx, bringing food to the unfortunate, the alienated, the drug-addicted. We experience the events of the story through the consciousness of the older of the nuns, Edgar. The author's descriptions of the setting are other-worldly and intensely disturbing. Yet somehow in all of this there are notes of hope. The two nuns have caught glimpses of a young girl, Esmeralda, apparently living by her wits, perhaps in one of the stripped down carcasses of automobiles; they try to catch her to help her, but she is elusive. Something terrible happens, but out of the tragedy, an improbable sort of miracle happens as well. This story was one that gave me shivers. I think that I now need to go back and read some of DeLillo's novels....

The Kindle Dilemma

I have not been a friend or advocate of e-readers (Kindles, Nooks, and others), fearing that they signal the diminishment of, and perhaps eventually even the end of, my beloved "real" books, books with pages and covers. But I have been persuaded by many friends and family members that they are useful for travel, useful for getting books immediately on demand, etc. My daughter recently said, "Mom, I have to tell you something you won't like," causing me a flash of worry, until she mischievously continued, "I got a Kindle!" In her case, she uses it for commuting to her job downtown on public transportation, as well as for her frequent travel by air, and finds the Kindle easy to carry and use in those situations. I continue to resist getting one myself, but I am not protesting them as vehemently as I used to, as I foresee that eventually it will be one of those items that "everyone" has, and eventually I will probably succumb and get one. In matters of technology, I am usually a "late adopter," and will be so for this device as for others in the past. At that point I will have to "eat my words." So I am now, with sadness and apprehension, stopping (at least most of the time!) speaking out against them. Now I can only hope that the e-reader and the traditional book will continue to co-exist, each having its advantages and its uses at different times and in different situations. (But why do I feel somewhat sorrowful and defeated as I type this post...?)