Judas

Amos Oz has thought provoking novel, using his position as a popular novelist as his bully pulpit.
He has used his characters to express without taking sides some of his political viewpoints.

This is the story of three main characters.  Shmuel Ash, a young graduate student at university writing his thesis on the Jewish belief of Jesus Christ.  After his father loses his job and declares bankruptcy, Shmuel drops out of school.  He has also quite recently broken up with his girlfriend, who has left him to marry an old boyfriend.  In his depressed state he answers an advertisement for a companion for an elder gentleman.  He moves into the home of Gershom Ward, a brilliant but argumentative invalid.  He lives in the home of his daughter-in-law, a 40 something year old widow, Atalia Abraveanel, whose husband, Gershom son, was killed in Israel's war of independence.

These three confused and unhappy people exist together in the house for three months as slowly the barriers dissolve between them.  They come to depend on each other and though they have different views on the political situation in Israel in 1959, they begin to live in harmony.

Ash is infatuated with Atalia, who has sworn off all men, thinking they are like grown children who play at fighting and war.  As Ash and Atalia discuss the results of the conflict between Jews and Arabs as the State of Israel is becoming a reality Atalia explains her father's point of view, whcih could very well be Amos Oz's perspective on the crisis in the Middle East also.
Atalia explains that maybe it would be room two communities, the Arabs and the Jews to live side by side without the boundries of a state.  She says, "The Jews here are actually a single big refugee camp, and so are the Arabs.  And now the Arabs live day by day with the disaster of their defeat, and the Jews live night by night with the dread of their vengeance."  Oz describes this feeling of frustration, self righteousness, anger and vengeance so clearly, it seems clear the need for a two state solution to the end the conflict, even today in modern times.

In contrast with this plot line is Shmuel researching his thesis on the "Jewish Views of Jesus".
As he studies the history of the crucifixion of Jesus and the last supper, he reads about Judas Iscariot, the founder of the Christian religion.  He would orchestrate the the crucifixion.  He was the director and stage manager of the spectacle.  This plot line is also fascinating.  It makes the reader think about Christianity from a different perspective.

A Few Right Thinking Men

Sulari Gentill has gotten the voice and creative charm of aristocratic Australia exactly right.  I followed up my promise to read the rest the Rowland Sinclair mystery novels and I am glad I found this series.  The writing style is fun to read.  I can almost hear it come to life as I am reading.  The characters are wonderfully colorful and Gentill's descriptions are so vivid I can almost see Sinclair, Milton, Clyde and Edna come to life as I am reading.

Rowland Sinclair comes from a family of means living in Australia during the economic depression of the 1930s.   He comes home to the family estate meets some artistic friends who do have the wealth he has inherited and invites them to move in with him.  He has found his passion in painting and paints portraits of Edna while secretly harboring a crush on her.  there are hints she may feel the same way but she is an artist in her own right and does not want to give up her career for marriage.  So they all live together having adventures and getting into trouble.  Of course murder is involved and they help to sort that out along the way.

Sinclair is straddling two areas of society with a foot in each social group, upper crust and middle class.  He balances both with finesse.  Hanging out with his friends and visiting with his brother each group wary of the other.  I do hope in the end he and Edna find love together....it would be perfect.

A Meal In Winter

This time the story is told from the point of view of the German soldier.  Author, Hubert Mingarelli captures the cold, hunger and despair of three German soldiers caught in the war machine.

The beautiful prose is captured by translator, Sam Taylor, describing the cold harsh climate of winter in Poland as the three soldiers set out to capture what they refer to as "one of them" , a Jewish male and bring him back to camp.  The three, Emmerich, Bauer and the narrator set out to capture "the Jew" to escape the work they are assigned to do as part of their regiment.  When they leave camp they think they have gotten a reprieve from the horrendous duties they know they will have to perform the next day.  They trudge off through the snow with lightened hearts.  They capture their unnamed prisoner and decide to spend the night in an abandoned house along the way.  There they meet an unnamed Pole, who through the night challenges their belief on life and death and each of the three German soldiers must wrestle with their own conscience.

Interestingly, three characters in this story are never called by name, the narrator, the Jewish prisoner, and the Polish hunter they meet in the woods.  Each man confronts the cold, hunger and his own feelings about anti-Semitism.  Through their shared experience in the house and the knowledge of what awaits the soldiers back at army base they try to enjoy this time away.  But their personal backgrounds and the tension that builds through night affects their reactions to the situation in front of them.

Though a short novel in length, this is a deep and expressive plot that will keep the reader thinking for quite a while after putting the book down.  So descriptive is the narrative that you feel the cold and fear that builds as the story progresses.  Maybe by not giving names to the three characters the reader has a chance to put himself in each of their shoes and see which person he most relates to.  A way to take on a persona in the novel and find out where he would fit in emotionally in this situation.

Commonwealth

I have read all of Ann Patchett's books.  They are all terrific.  As I started reading this book, Commonwealth, I was thinking, ehh not her best work,  but then you hit the first real twist and you are thrown for a loop.  Patchett has done it again.  She is great at getting inside her characters and really making you understand their feelings and their perspective on the situations they are living through.

This is a story about six children and how their families are intermingled.  This is a story about how life plays out like a chain reaction and each occurrence leads to the next.  It doesn't do any good to sit and wonder what if this happened or that didn't happen to avoid a part of your life you would rather skip, because then the good things might not have happened either.  When Bert Cousins ends up at the christening party for new baby Franny Keating, it starts the sequence of events in motion for the Cousins and Keatings families that lasts their entire lives.

When Bert Cousins kisses Beverly Keating, both their marriages are in jeopardy.  The six children, Caroline and Franny Keating and Cal, Holly, Jeanette and Albie Cousins all end up as step siblings and spend their summers together.  As they grow up and move on with their lives the experiences they had during those childhood summers influence their adulthood.  When Franny falls in love with Leo Posen an award winning author who is suffering a dry spell, she tells him her life story which he turns into a fictitious account that becomes a bestseller.  As each of the family members reads the book it brings them all back together and Franny must come to terms with the question of who owns their story.  The siblings are forced to come to terms with the secrets and shared history both good and bad.  This is a story of family love, loss and the strength of family loyalty.

In the Unlikely Event

I guess I am a little late to the party reading Judy Blume's book, In The Unlikely Event.  This is not a new book and Judy Blume is not a new author.  But I did not grow up with Blume and neither did my children, so I was not rushing out to get this book.  After it was recommended to me for the umpteenth time I finally ran out and picked it up.  After all it is written about a situation that happened in my home state of New Jersey.  That does add to the enjoyment for me of reading the book.  But Blume does have a great storytelling style that just pulls the reader in.

What a terrific plot line. Not sure how soon I want to get on an airplane again, but this was a great book based on the historic facts of the three plane crashes into and out of Newark airport, which all crashed in Elizabeth , NJ in the early 1950s. Judy Blume takes the news reports and creates characters whose lives were all affected by the accidents that happened in their town. They either lost a loved one in one of the fiery crashes or saw a plane go down. This novel is a fascinating study in how people react to disaster and also just a fast paced novel about human interactions and relationships.

Blume takes quite a number of characters and tells their stories in alternating sections as each day goes by during a few month period where incredibly three airplanes crash in Elizabeth, NJ either taking off or trying to land at Newark Airport.  All these events are tragic but Blume then shows how the characters she shows going through the motions of their everyday lives are affected by each crash.

At times it seems like none of the characters are connected at all and there were points were as I was reading I was wondering if I would be able to keep all the people described straight.  Blume does a fabulous job of pulling all the people together interweaving their lives together and through the accidents.  I really am glad I finally read this book.

The Dogs and the Wolves

This is, I think, one of Irene Nemirovsky's best novels.  The translator points out at the beginning of the book that in French there are multiple translations for the for the words wolf and dog.  Those subtle inferences don't come across as well in English.  In spite of her frustration with the differences between languages, I think, the messages and nuances in the book are terrific. The plot is interesting and the differences between the rich and poor classes are well defined.  The life of Jews living in both Russia and France are vividly described.  This is the story of the Sinner family, who through the generations have become separated and one part of the family is wealthy and the other the poor relations.  How these two factions interact and help each other is represented in a very realistic way and quite fascinating.

A friend who grew up in Belgium and speaks French as her first language, explains that in French there is very little difference between a wolf and a dog.  It is a fine line and there is a saying that at dusk it is hard to tell the difference between a wolf and a dog.  In this book, Nemirovsky uses that overlap to show the fine line between the Jews who live at the top of the hill, who are wealthy and those who are at the bottom of the hill, just managing to scrap by.  The reader may go into the story thinking they know who the good and bad guys are, but the line is fuzzy.

Harry is the handsome cousin who has been brought up in the mansion in luxury, and Ben the cousin who grows up in poverty.  Ada is in love with Harry, but knows her place in society and settles for marriage to Ben.  She spends her life watching Harry's life from the outside.  She watches him going through life from the outside.  Some of the descriptions of Ada watching Harry at parties as dusk turns to darkness, so that it is hard to tell which of them is the dog or the wolf.  Ben also gets in bed with Harry's uncles in business, at first to take advantage of their position to bring himself up in the world, then to bring them down with him when his business dealings fail.  Again a slim line between who is the wolf and who is the dog in this case.

Nemirovsky is a wonderful storyteller, one who understands human nature and also clearly describes the social casting of life in Russia and prewar France.  Her writing seems somewhat autobiographical as she creates the characters in this book.  She seems to use her personal relatives as models for the characters in this book.

The Little Paris Bookshop

I feel like there is a multitude of books that follow along the path of Harold Fry and his pilgrimage to save an old friend instead of sending her a letter in the mail.  Now in this new book, The Little Paris Bookshop, author Nina George takes us on a journey with Monsieur Jean Perdu as he pursues his lost love.  The plot becomes not only the relationships between characters but their travel experiences also.

Monsieur Perdu is now a middle aged bookseller, who has lived the past 20 years of his life regretting the loss of a love affair he had with a beautiful young woman who was married to another man.  He has walled up the room in his apartment that they shared all those years ago, just as he has created a barrier to his heart.  He has spend the last two decades giving relationship advice to the people who come to his floating barge bookstore.  His shop is called the Literary Apothecary and is a barge that is tied up to the dock in .   Perdu bought this boat and filled it with books as a remedy for the countless undefined afflictions of the soul.  Perdu says, "I wanted to treat feelings that are recognized as afflictions and are never diagnosed by doctors."  When customers come onto his bookshop he analyzes them and recommends books for their personal symptoms, love sickness, loss, depression and other aliments.  Though he is very good at diagnosing and treating others, he continues to live with his depression, unable to be open to new love and friendship.

When Catherine moves into the apartment building Perdu lives in he finally is aware of feelings he thought long gone and well buried coming to the surface.  He realizes that he can still care about another person and once the wall is cracked, he finds himself attracted to Catherine, he is warmed when their skin touches and he could even be interested in more of a relationship after all this time.

Of course one plot line needs closure before the next story can begin.  This is a story of how misunderstandings can lead to large mistakes and loss.  Also this is a story of forgiveness and how to find closure and move forward when one relationship ends so that another relationship can begin.