Lori Eshleman's Blog, page 5

The Fox and Dr. Shimamura, by Christine Wunnicke

The Fox and Dr. Shimamura by Christine Wunnicke

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


In this German novel, Japanese folk beliefs about fox-possession meet late 19th century French and German neurology. The result is surrealist fiction in which things may or may not be what they appear, and no one knows for sure: not the characters or the reader. The retired Japanese physician, Dr. Shimamura, is an invalid with an undefined illness cared for by a quartet of women, including his wife, mother and mother-in-law. These domestic scenes with their uneasy familial relationships alternate with flashbacks to Dr. Shimamura’s early fieldwork investigating cases of fox-possession in Japanese women—and the mysterious disappearance of his young assistant decades ago. We also follow Dr. Shimamura to Europe where he interacts with some of the great neurologists of the late 19th century, including Dr. Charcot and Dr. Breuer, the mentor of Sigmund Freud. Dr. Charcot works with female hysterics whose sexualized behavior shows parallels to Japanese fox-possession. Both physicians become fascinated with Dr. Shimamura, who ever since his fieldwork, has himself evinced symptoms of hysteria—or fox-possession. He, in turn, has been sent to Europe by the Japanese emperor to study German and French neurology and psychiatry. This short novel has elements of a fairytale of the unromantic type where violence and sexuality lurk just beneath the surface. Wunnicke succeeds in entangling European neurology in this same fairytale web, so that one system of thought seems no more or less fantastic than the other. The reader, too, becomes caught in this spider’s web of science and folklore, with its mysterious tangle of broken memory, faulty perception, and ambiguous truth.



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Review of Henry, Himself, by Stewart O'Nan

Henry, Himself by Stewart O'Nan

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


I was eager to read O’Nan’s new novel, which continues the story of a Pittsburgh family told in two previous books--Wish You Were Here, and Emily, Alone—and it did not disappoint. Like these earlier books, O’Nan details the daily life and inner thoughts of the characters, in this case Henry, the family patriarch. A retired engineer, Henry maintains the exactitude of his profession in his household routines, lawn-care, tinkering on projects in the basement, and maintaining the family cabin at Chautauqua. No detail is too small for his attention, whether it be the church rummage sale, a golf outing with buddies, or the leaves that drift into his yard from the neighbors each fall. The small and large accidents of life continually de-center his plan to maintain order. The reader is made aware of his aging body with its unsettling aches and bruises; the slightest frictions with his wife or daughter, Margaret; and the nagging thoughts about his own death and how it will come. His world is shared by his loyal dog Rufus; his wife of 50 years, Emily; and his two children, their spouses and grandchildren. Pittsburgh, his hometown, is the world he has known from childhood—and he is attentive not only to the round of seasons, the annual celebrations at church and home, but also to the ways Pittsburgh has changed and stayed the same over the years. We share a year in his life, from Valentine’s Day and a dinner out that involves a chilly ride on the Duchesne Incline; to a brisk New Year’s Day walk around the reservoir with Rufus. Henry holds memories and regrets, like us all, including a best-friend who died in WWII; an early, secret love affair; a difficult relationship with his daughter; and a general sense of social inadequacy, of not quite knowing how to fit in. In counterpoint are small bursts of pleasure and surprise, like sitting on the dock in the moonlight with an arm around his wife and remembering their courtship, or receiving a Father’s Day gift from his children of a Grundig transistor radio he didn’t know he wanted. People, events, and thoughts conspire to knock him slightly off-course, showing him and us that life often gives us less—and more—than we expect.



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Sing to It, by Amy Hempel

Sing to It: New Stories by Amy Hempel

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Ranging in length from less than a page to over sixty, this new collection of short stories offers slices of experience in oblique, startling prose. One of the most moving—and difficult to read--stories, “A Full-Service Shelter,” is narrated by a volunteer for an animal shelter, in a repetitive cadence that evokes the messy, repeated attempts to save abandoned dogs—or at least to cherish them in their last hours: “they knew us as the ones who…came to take the death-row dogs…for a long last walk, brought them good dinners, cleaned out their kennels, and made their beds with beach towels and bath mats” (11). The longest story, “Cloudland,” tells a story of a long-ago baby given up for adoption at a maternity home that was not what it seemed. The mother, now a care-giver for the elderly, lives in a crumbling rental house in Florida, whose unswept porch, leaky roof, and overgrown vegetation teach us the depth of the narrator’s grief. Mundane events, such as buying Girl Scout cookies, are given a knife-twist: “New this year is a gluten-free option: the flavor is toffee. This is the kind I buy two boxes of, and the girl I hand the money to is the girl I gave away” (114). In almost Symbolist fashion, a painting of faceless girls in white dresses fleeing a storm, titled “Cloudland” (a gift to the narrator), points beyond itself to a psychic disaster that cannot be fully captured by words. Yet, amidst this mystery of loss, Hempel weaves dry humor that made me chuckle--like the elderly neighbor with a preference for Norwegian jokes: “Why Norwegian? Because he subscribed to a sort of Norwegian joke compilation. Maybe he was Norwegian. I kept my eyes on the ants in my car till the joke had crawled to its end” (131). In another story, a bowl of never-eaten green apples, like the poison apple in a fairytale, becomes an emblem of revenge. Polysemic and dissonant, Hempel’s stories jolt new meaning from the ordinary, and reground the extraordinary.



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Review of The Western Wind, by Samantha Harvey

The Western Wind by Samantha Harvey

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Set in 1491 in the English village of Oakham, this novel is at once a mystery, a historical novel, and a psychological portrait of the village and its inhabitants. It is also an evocation of a watery, mud-soaked, riverine landscape in winter—a landscape that holds particular power over the local folk, as the river has lost its bridge. Relentless rain, flooded banks, and foggy woods roll over the characters and the reader, evoking a sense of psychic confusion. In the narrator’s words, “In my thirteen Oakham winters I’d never known such rain, nor seen this place so churned and soaked and listless in its mood and colour” (168). The reverse-chronology of the narrative, which moves backward from Shrove Tuesday to Shrove Saturday, heightens the confusion. We learn at the beginning that Tom Newman, the wealthiest man in town, has died—most likely drowned in the river. Through the first-person narrative of the village priest, John Reve, we are led back in time to seek what happened. It slowly becomes clear that Tom Newman is not only the priest’s best friend, but also the messenger of a radical new proto-Protestant theology that offers direct access to God, without mediation of a priest.
Also left in doubt is the state of Tom’s soul at the time of death, a matter of grave concern to the priest. Other concerns weigh on him, such as the mysterious disease of a young woman named Sarah, the paganistic village celebrations, and the troublesome demands of a church official from Ely, who schemes to identify the supposed killer through the confessional. The Western Wind transcends its historical setting in raising questions about life, death, desire, guilt, hypocrisy—and the nature of time. As John Reve says, “Why can’t time go backwards as well as forward? If time’s not a river but a circle…” (p. 189). It is in hope of this, perhaps, that he prays for a sign from God: to reverse the wind, like reversing time. And that he narrates the story in reverse so you reach “Not where you washed up, but the waves that washed you there” (p. 285).




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Review of Dreamless, by Jørgen Brekke

Dreamless by Jørgen Brekke

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


As a fan of Scandinavian mysteries, I was excited to try my first mystery by Norwegian writer Jørgen Brekke. It did not disappoint. Dreamless weaves connections between a present-day murder in Trondheim, investigated by a detective suffering from memory loss, Chief Inspector Odd Singsaker; and an 18th century murder in the same town, investigated by then Chief of Police, Nils Bayer. Both revolve around an 18th century ballad called "The Golden Peace," which promises sleep to whomever hears it. This promise appeals to the damaged, sleep-deprived villain, who seeks a young woman with a beautiful voice to sing the ballad, as a prelude to killing her. One woman has already been murdered; and a teenage girl has gone missing. Will Singsaker figure out the mystery of the ballad in time to save her? Brekke is adept at evoking the atmosphere of Trondheim in two different centuries, and the hunt for the clues takes the reader to library archives, a manor-house museum, and various specialists in old music and musical artifacts. In the process, Brekke blends the macabre with the mystical and historical, with satisfying results.



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Review of To the River, by Olivia Laing

To the River by Olivia Laing

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


This 2011 work of nonfiction follows the author’s walking tour along the course of the River Ouse, in Sussex, England. We experience with her the path through meadows rich with bird and plant-life—or alternately through industrial suburbs--the heat of sunny days and the sudden, chilling rainstorms, the immersive sensation of swimming at various watering holes along the way, and the traveler’s relief at having a hot meal and a rest at an inn. Laing treats the reader to fascinating digressions on historical events, such as the Battle of Lewes in 1264, when the rebel army of Simon de Montfort defeated the royalists; in the mid-19th century, during construction of a railroad, workers came across hundreds of skeletons from this ancient battle, with which they infilled a macabre embankment near the river. Laing also weaves the melancholy story of Virginia and Leonard Wolfe through the book, their home near Lewes, and Virginia’s suicide by drowning in the Ouse in 1941. Other writers, scientists, and engineers populate the book, such as Kenneth Grahame, the author of The Wind in the Willows, which sparked Laing’s fascination with rivers; Gideon Mantell, the physician who found the fossils of a dinosaur near the river in the early 19th century, and named it an iguanodon. Central to the book is the river itself, and the impact of humans on its very shape and course, with the draining of surrounding marshlands; and canalizing of portions of the river beginning in the late 18th century. Despite these efforts, Laing demonstrates that the element of water escapes human control, to flood and destroy towns, mills, beaches, and fields. Seeping into the story of this riverine journey, water itself becomes a fluid embodiment of the ever-flowing passage of life, where “there is no possibility of permanent tenancy on this circling planet” (p. 245).



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Review of Convenience Store Woman, by Sayaka Murata

Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


After reading a review in the New Yorker, I found a copy of this novel by Japanese writer Sayaka Murata in the new book section of my local library. The title character, Keiko, feels a disconnect from the “normal” people around her until she gets a part-time job at a convenience store. There, she finds her place among the bright displays of packaged foods, cold drinks and sundries, the routines of sales and stocking, and the personalities of the other employees. By copying their speech, intonation, and even style of dressing, she achieves a simulacrum of a self and a modicum of acceptance. Later in life, as every other employee has moved on to a better job, marriage, and children, Keiko still maintains her convenience store identity, until questions from her friends and family drive her to hook up with an equally disconnected man who briefly works at the store. Shiraha seems to think he has found himself a perfect cover for not working, cooking, or paying rent. But Keiko’s ruse does not convince anyone that she has been “cured,” as her sister puts it. In ways, by the end of the book, society’s ideal of a normal life comes to seem equally artificial as the life Keiko has shaped for herself by her total dedication to being an ideal “Smile Mart” employee.



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Review of Warlight, by Michael Ondaatje

Warlight by Michael Ondaatje

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Michael Ondaatje’s new novel is set in England in the aftermath of World War II, in the secretive world of British intelligence agents. Among them there is the sense that the war is not really over, but lives on in an environment of secrecy, dark deeds, and vengefulness. The novel centers on Nathaniel and his sister Rachel, who are inexplicably abandoned by their parents, as teenagers, and left in the care of strangers whose identities and connections to them they don’t understand. Throughout the book, Nathaniel attempts to piece together the broken fragments of their family history, their mother and her role during the war, the identity of the strangers who cared for him--and consequently to piece together his own identity. Among the strangers who shape his life: the Moth, who resides with them in their family home; the Darter, who leads Nathaniel into an underworld of illicit greyhound smuggling on the river system surrounding London. The teenage Nathaniel relishes these nighttime adventures on barges and trucks that weave unerringly through the streets of London, much like during wartime. Meanwhile, a girl he meets at one of his first jobs, Agnes, leads him on adventures of a different kind in the rooms of empty, for-sale homes in London.
After a dangerous attack on the two siblings, their mother abruptly reappears and removes them from this life of adventure and uncertainty. Much later, as an adult, Nathaniel continues his efforts to unravel his mother’s life and his own, now through his job in the archives of the intelligence service. What emerges is a picture of a strong woman, shaped by her childhood in Suffolk, by her compatriots in the intelligence service, and by the will to be involved as the war unfolds. Taking on a necessarily secret identity, Rose becomes a woman who is unknowable, even by her children. As she states when questioned about her role in the war, “My sins are various” (p. 225). Nathaniel, too, is wrapped in secrecy, as is the novel as a whole. The largely first-person narrative is both analytical and sensuous; both revealing and concealing. It is particularly attentive to the muffled nighttime atmosphere; the mysterious sounds of birds and animals; the labyrinthine rivers, streets, and war-time maps that seem to encompass the hidden and inaccessible layers of the past. Like an archaeologist, in this novel Ondaatje excavates the unknowable shards of time, place, and persons. This is a novel that must be read through to the last sentence, in order to begin to see the fragments put together. By turns perplexed and enthralled, in the end I was deeply moved.




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Review of Birdcage Walk, by Helen Dunmore

Birdcage Walk by Helen Dunmore

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


In Helen Dunmore’s last novel before her death, a young woman named Lizzie is caught between allegiance to her writer-mother, Julia--“Mammie”--and an intense bond with her new husband, John Diner Tredevant, a real estate developer in Bristol. The novel is set in England during the time of the French Revolution, and paints a portrait of the illicit society of radical thinkers in England, who write, publish, and preach for equality, the rights of women and the poor, and against the divine right of kings. The novel is prefaced by the discovery of an 18th century gravestone in a Bristol graveyard, commemorating Julia Fawkes, which intrigues a modern visitor. No writings of hers remain, except for a damaged letter. As Dunmore says in the Afterword, “The question of what is left behind by a life haunts the novel” (405).

The rest of the novel imagines Julia’s life, through her daughter’s eyes. Lizzie herself has no talent for writing, is not particularly interested in radical politics, and has left the family nest for love of her new husband, who goes by his middle name, Diner. Gradually we come to know Diner, through Lizzie’s eyes--and what we learn is ominous and weaves a skein of tension into the narrative. Lizzie and Diner’s half-finished home, among a group of grand houses under construction, overlooks a spectacular gorge and wild forest beyond. As Diner struggles to complete the properties and persuade others to buy into his grand vision, the sense of entropy and ruin grows, against the backdrop of increasingly violent news from France. Throughout the novel, Lizzie shuttles back and forth between her husband’s house and her mother’s home in Bristol, where she becomes more and more caught up in her mother’s health and the well-being of her new-born brother. Her thoughts on the paradoxes of life and death are bleak, brave, and unflinching, and seem to express the author’s own voice. As a character, Lizzie can be frustrating for her stubbornness and naiveté; but she is all the more real for this, and shows her strength as the story hurtles toward a searing climax. Dunmore’s favorite themes of deception, devotion, obsession, and loss come together in this stunning historical narrative—a fitting culmination of the writer’s long career.




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Review of Bridget Crack, by Rachel Leary

Bridget Crack by Rachel Leary

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


In this first novel by Australian writer Rachel Leary, a female convict named Bridget Crack is sent into service to Tasmania in 1826. So begins an adventure story that takes us from the towns and farms of colonial Tasmania to the forests, mountains, and rivers of its wilderness. Bridget first goes into service with the family of Colonel Marshall, who is oddly drawn to this pretty, lively young woman. But through a series of rebellious actions, Bridget tumbles from one position to another, and finally escapes into the wilderness, where she meets up with a band of bushrangers, led by Matt Sheedy. In each increasingly rough situation Bridget does what she has to do to survive, whether with the settlers and bushrangers, or with the challenging landscape. Colonel Marshall, who hears rumors of her life among the outlaws, wonders what kind of person she really is, whether innocent or evil. Leary’s prose is urgent and visceral, driving the story forward with the surge of Bridget’s flight through the wilderness. I especially liked her portrayal of time and consciousness as reduced to immersive experience; for example: “Days floated out under her like water. She had no grip on them, no grip on anything. Time was lost. Meaning was lost. A sack only brown, rough to touch, rich grassy smell” (142-43). The theme of escape runs throughout the novel: escape back to England, escape to China, escape to the mountains. And the despair that comes from the sense that there is no escape. There are moments of comfort, as in Bridget’s encounter with the trader Sully, or with the brown-eyed hunting dog she names Bury, short for Bury St. Edmunds, from her lost life in England. But comfort in this story is hard to come by. Near the end I couldn’t put the book down; it left me stunned, sad, and impressed all at once.



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