What a great story and what a beautiful book! When life gets tough, we make unusual alliances and find unexpected friendships.  And we don’t have to be the same in order to get along! A line from the book sums it up, “Our most important friends are sometimes those we least expected.”

Tragedy struck both human and animal life with the devastating tsunami in the Indian Ocean on Dec. 26, 2004. An orphaned baby hippo was rescued  and sought solace in a friendship with an old tortoise in his new home in Kenya. They became inseparable. The photographs are amazing and this  true story is well told. “Mzee” means ‘elder’ in Swahili.

Owen & Mzee

Update: ”As of March 2007, Mzee has been removed from the enclosure. A female hippopotamus named Cleo has been added to provide companionship for Owen. Owen seems to be adapting to his new companion and it is possible that Owen and Cleo will have offspring when he reaches maturity.” [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Owen_and_Mzee]

Bruno is a village policeman, well versed with the ways of his sleepy but robust little town, from the markets to the vineyards. He has a basset hound, makes his own wine, grows his own vegetables, and teaches five year olds tennis. That way he not only participates in community service, but knows the characters of the boys when they become troublesome teenagers.  Here’s a quote about Bruno from Walker’s website. “Bruno handles cases with great discretion, circulating so quietly and tactfully among his neighbours that his interviews are more like friendly visits; it’s a wonderful detection method and even cannier literary strategy, allowing Walker to pursue the plot of his mystery while beguiling the reader with extended scenes of village market days, old-fashioned wine harvests, etc.”

Martin Walker comes to his novel writing with an impressive list of credentials. He is an Oxford scholar, accomplished in journalism, European history, politics, international relations, and economics. He owns a basset hound,  just like his character Bruno, and a house in the Dordogne region of France. This is the first in his Bruno series and he has written other books as well. His website is worth looking at.  I’m sure I’ll be making an armchair visit to France and this Bruno series again!
Martin Walker Website

Leo Gursky is an old man just trying to survive. His life has been a series of losses. Although he doesn’t know it yet, the book he wrote so long ago has survived, crossing oceans and changing lives…

Nicole Krauss often has writers as characters in her books. I’ve also read her most recent book ‘Great House‘ which was nominated for the Orange Prize (see Archive May 2011). She uses many of her own family details in her stories. ‘History of Love’ is dedicated to her grandparents. She is married to author Jonathan Safran Foer who wrote ‘Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close’ (see Archive January 2012). There are some striking similarities between their books which were both published in the same year (2005). Both stories feature a young precocious child on a quest, both have old men mourning  the loss of sons, both have painful reverberations from the war in Europe, and both authors use some of the same unusual typography.

Krauss writes beautifully. Her descriptions are evocative and her characters are well portrayed right through to the soul. She captures the complexity of relationships and crafts a good story, although at times I find the thread in her books confusing and hard to follow. (When this happens a quick consultation on wikipedia is enough to keep me going; I’d rather put up with a spoiler and know what’s happening). She uses a common technique of alternating sections authored by different characters and what was helpful and enjoyable were the little icons at the start of the chapter indicating which narrator was coming up. In the end the pieces do come together.  The final words of the novel are haunting, “He was a great writer. He fell in love. It was his life.” The book begins with the same thought in the dedication, “For my grandparents, who taught me the opposite of disappearing and for Jonathan, my life.” This book is a celebration of life and love, which to quote Leo Gursky are “words for everything”.

Michael Morpurgo is a master storyteller and an excellent speaker. I had the pleasure of hearing him speak in our little town of Windsor last year. What he said about ‘War Horse’ at that time, just before the movie came out, is that Joey represents all of the victims of war without taking any particular side. I’ve included an interview with the author at the end of this post.

Michael Morpurgo is a great storyteller. Since I had read War Horse a long time ago, I just spent the weekend reading three more of his books. I was totally absorbed. He has written a lot of them. Have a look at his website. It’s entitled “Stories for everyone.” That is exactly right. That is what he does. He tells stories that everyone, at any age, would enjoy, and those are always the best kind.  (www.michaelmorpurgo.com)

Washed up on an island in the Pacific, Michael struggles to survive on his own. With no food and no water, he curls up to die. When he wakes, there is a plate beside him of fish, of fruit, and a bowl of fresh water. He is not alone…

Aman, a refugee from Afghanistan, badly needs a friend, when a Springer Spaniel appears, seemingly out of nowhere. The dog becomes a constant companion, a shadow, and that’s what Aman decides to call her.

They say cats have nine lives, and that’s certainly true of Kaspar. From the glamorous suites of the Savoy Hotel to the servants’ quarters in the attic, to New York City, Kaspar proves that no cat is too small for big adventures. But then this is no ordinary cat. He’s Prince Kaspar Kandinksky – the only cat to survive the sinking of the Titanic…

Oskar is nine years old and autistic. After his father is killed in the World Trade Center, Oskar finds a key in his father’s closet and embarks on a quest to discover the lock which fits this mysterious key. Oskar is extremely smart and incredibly brave. He is an inventor and his imagination is unstoppable. It is so much fun to dwell alongside the quirky thoughts in his head as he travels around NYC.  The author must have enjoyed inventing the unusual effects in his book. I’m not even sure I’ve figured them all out, so I’m glad I can ask him myself when I attend a writers’ conference in April. What has me stumped are the six doorknob pictures and their exact significance. It feels like a riddle of my own to solve. Please comment if you’ve read the book and have it figured out.

One important thing to know is that there are two story lines in addition to Oskar’s. The chapters entitled “Why I’m Not Where You Are” are letters written by Thomas’ father explaining his reasons for returning to Germany before Thomas was born. The chapters entitled “My Feelings” are a letter from Oskar’s grandmother, explaining some things in her life.

Here is the trailer for the movie starring Tom Hanks and Sandra Bullock. Although I haven’t seen the movie yet, I have a sense that some of the literary techniques will be lost in the movie as well as the opportunity to enter Oskar’s head. But it’s still a cracking good story either way.

There are so many good points in this book. It is positive, refreshing, and for me rings true. It is written in an inclusive style that draws the reader in. It asks some really good questions. And sometimes a really good question is as important as a number of answers. The ideas are new,  yet not new, and are presented in a clear, uncluttered voice.

Bell’s book is controversial and has sparked some negative reviews. As is often the case with controversial books, many judge without ever cracking the spine. So don’t rely on what others say, read it for yourself.

‘The Mistress of Nothing’  won the Governor General’s Award in 2009 and is a captivating armchair travelogue with a decent story line. The exotic ancient setting and exploration of that time period, both Egyptian and English, make it a good piece of historical fiction.

The words on the back cover of the book sum it up well. “Sally and Lady Duff Gordon throw themselves into their exotic surrounding, adopting native dress, learning Arabic, and visiting the tombs of ancient pharaohs. Along the way, Sally comes to experience freedoms she as a servant, has never known before, as well as her first taste of romance. But freedom is a luxury that a maid can ill afford, and when Sally grasps far more than status entitles her to, she is brutally reminded that she is mistress of nothing.”

A woman’s son disappears following a brutal murder in a small town. She journeys into the snowy cold wilderness to track him and clear his name, but she is not alone. Many others are tracking as well, and as new characters are introduced, suddenly the wilderness seems full of other trackers and possible suspects, all on their own journeys. Penney’s writing captures the spirit of the place and the time and the themes are around a sense of longing, a yearning for something you seek, but may never find.  There is little tenderness in the wild and rugged landscape.  The wolves are often feared but never turn out to be the culprits – man is much more to be feared than wolf.

The suspense in the novel centres around the murder but there are many other secrets and suspicions.  There are a lot of characters to keep track of in this one, so I kept a yellow sticky in the front to scribble a ‘who’s who’ list which becomes a handy reference. The various narratives become clearer as the story progresses. This book reminded me of Joseph Boyden’s novel ‘Through Black Spruce’. The author is interesting – she never travelled to Canada because she was agoraphobic and couldn’t fly or even travel by train. She did her research at the British Library in London.

Grace is getting what we don’t deserve; mercy is not getting what we do deserve. 

It is fitting to start the New Year with a book about grace. We all know that remarkable relief when we know we are wrong and yet don’t get into trouble for it. It is so easy to see “ungrace” when grace is absent, and so wonderful when it is present. It’s like when you accidentally break that vase in your mother’s house and instead of the wrath or disappointment you were expecting, she says something like “oh, I always secretly hated that old thing!”  Grace is profound and truly amazing. It is so comforting to know that God is full of grace and unconditional love. “There is nothing we can do to make God love us more. There is nothing we can do to make God love us less.”

Though not new, ‘What’s so Amazing about Grace’  is one of the few books that I re-read every few years. In all of his books, what Yancey brings to the reader  is profound thinking in a highly readable style. Through stories Yancey not so much defines, as gives us a sense of grace and ungrace. Rather than being known for what they are against, imagine Christians being known for bringing the transformative power of love and grace to others?  I love the quote the publisher put on the flyleaf about this book: “Grace does not excuse sin, says Yancy, but it treasures the sinner. True grace is shocking, scandalous. It shakes our conventions with its insistence on getting close to sinners and touching them with mercy and hope.”

“Grief is the tax we pay on our attachments.”   Thomas Lynch

Those who take care of our bodies, either in sickness or in death, see us at our most vulnerable. We are intrigued about how people can do these noble jobs: nursing home carers, intensive care nurses, surgeons, pastors, and funeral directors. Dealing every day with death and near death seems most difficult at best, morbid at worst. However, oddly enough, when we finally come to grips with our mortality, we begin to embrace life in all of its wonder and brevity. And when we hear how those in the caring professions manage, it takes away some of the mystery and brings new perspective.

Thomas Lynch, in ‘The Undertaking’, provides us with an insiders look into the daily life of  a funeral director, ‘undertaking’ a task which was a promise he made to his father: writing about their family business in the dismal trade. Lynch is a poet and an eloquent writer giving us a unique glimpse into how he and his family have been dedicated to burying members of a their small Michigan town for many years. Funeral directors perform necessary tasks and whether we love them or hate them, their mysterious business is intriguing and well articulated in this book. In Lynch’s words, what he does is “serving the living by caring for the dead.”