Featured Book: River Town -- Peter Hessler

River Town: Two Years on the Yangtze -- Peter Hessler


Publisher: Harper Perennial
Format: Trade paperback
Pages: 416 pages
Published: 2001

Synopsis: In 1996, 26-year-old American Peter Hessler relocated to a small town on the Yangtze River in China, as part of a Peace Corps mission. There, he taught English at a local college, learned Chinese, reached out to the community, and immersed himself in recording his experiences and observations, which became this book.

Review: Travelogues are a tricky genre, an arena in which there are two competing forces for the reader's attention: the narrator and the place. A successful travelogue is one in which both forces are compelling. Too many travelogues are dulled by a fantastic sense of place but an obnoxious narrator, especially a foreigner who bumbles into a new locale and demands joy and satisfaction without paying due respect. This is especially true when it comes to westerners traveling in developing countries, as is the case in this book, when Peter Hessler goes to China in 1996. The 90s were a turning point in Chinese history, an uneasy threshold between post-Mao China in poverty and a China gearing up to become the developing powerhouse it is today.

As someone who grew up partly in China during the 90s, Hessler captures a slice of a China that I remember from my childhood. Hessler isn't concerned with the grand political machinations of Beijing. Rather, he brings us to a small town on the Yangtze, exposing provincial life and the everyday experiences of his students as they learn English and dream for the future. There are several interesting characters that Hessler comes across, each with their own story to tell, and each student navigating their own precarious position in the new and emerging China.

Hessler is a sensitive, charming writer. He is personable without being judgemental, and his genuine desire to reach into the lives of his Chinese students and understand them makes him an excellent narrator. He isn't without his preconceptions, but he recognizes his own biases. He's respectful of the culture he enters, but he isn't afraid to point out negatives as well. For one, Hessler lived in a part of China where he was the first foreigner many locals ever saw, and he drew attention, good and bed, wherever he went.

I've read a number of travelogues similar to this one, stories about Americans who embark on Peace Corps-type missions and write down their experiences of cultures vastly different from their own. Many are flops, but some, such as this one, are rare successes.

 - N.S

Featured Book: The Tiger's Wife by Tea Obreht

The Tiger's Wife by Tea Obreht

Publisher: Random House
Format: Hardcover
Pages: 352 pages
Published: March 2011

The Tiger's Wife is a striped book -- appropriate enough, given its title. Its stripes are the stories contained therein, layered on top of each other, orange over black, black over orange. Set in an unnamed Balkan country during an unnamed war (which resembles the Yugoslav Wars of 1991-1995), there are really three narratives, a trifecta that does, for the most part, come together to form a whole. The first narrative is that of Natalia, a young doctor from a family of doctors, traveling to deliver vaccines to an orphrnate near a village that does not welcome her. The second narrative is that of her recently deceased grandfather, and his encounters with a man who could not die. The third narrative is another piece of her grandfather's history, about how, when hew as a boy growing up in the village of Galina, a tiger escaped from a zoo and terrorized the townsfolk.

I've read an interview with Obreht (who, by the way, is only 26) where she remarked that the novel is a story about doctors and death. I see what she means. Death and war bracket the novel -- large parts of the story are told during war or in the aftermath of war. And yes, all of the narratives are, in a sense, about dying, and about bodies, and about how people process death. The doctor part is interesting too, because all the doctor characters strive against death, fighting it with all the weapons in their arsenal, and yet they know death better than anyone. It can come at the end of a soldier's rifle or the swipe of a tiger's claw.

I have heard complaints that the novel is too opaque and that moving between the three stories never gives the reader a sense of the whole. In some parts, I think, this is true. The ending for me was not as smoothly transitional as the beginning, and I think that in the telling of history, of people's stories, we could have stood to hear more from Natalia. So much of the book is focused on her grandfather's history, that I think she has more to tell us, as a girl who has grown up during war.

These are small complaints, however. The Tiger's Wife is an enigmatic, elegant novel by a ferociously talented young writer. I look forward to whatever Obreht writes next.

- N.S

Featured Book: Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke

Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke

Publisher: Tor Books
Format: Trade Paperback
Pages: 1024 pages
Published: August 2006

Synopsis: There used to be magic in England, magic governed by the mysterious Raven King. However, magic has fallen into obscurity until two men of prophecy appear: Mr. Norrell, a paranoid recluse, and his pupil Jonathan Strange, an insouciant young man. Together, and with friends and enemies, they change the landscape of English magic.

Review: What can I say about this whopping monster of a book except brilliant, brilliant, brilliant? I heard that it took Susanna Clarke many years to write JS&MN and I believe it. The story is full of imagination, complex history, and believable backgrounds all wrapped up in language that matches the 1800s setting. You meet Wellington, Byron; you see the Napoleonic Wars. Yet in the same pitch-perfect language Clarke can summon humour, horror, unease, and wonder. I don’t think there is a single emotion she can’t pull out of you. Clarke doesn’t resort to cheap tricks to do it. No explosions or excessive drama. Just genuine low-key writing that delights as much as it astonishes.

I also like the representation of magic, especially how the magic Strange and Norrell used had its roots in the Raven King and in Fairy. Clarke’s Fairy is as Fairy should be: brilliant and unnerving. You should never feel right in your skin when fairies are about.

Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell is a long book. For anyone who spends a lot of time in the Hart House Library, it's a great project to tackle, and well worth the efforts.

Strange! Arabella! Norrell! Stephen Black! Vinculus! Childermass! England!

- N.S

Featured Book-Room by Emma Donoghue

Room by Emma Donoghue

Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
Format: Hardcover
Pages: 321 pages
Published: September 13, 2010

Call No: HH F DON

Synopsis

To five year-old Jack, Room is the world...

It's where he was born. It's where he and Ma eat and sleep and play and learn. There are endless wonders that let loose Jack's imagination-the snake under Bed that he constructs out of eggshells; the imaginary world projected through the TV; the coziness of Wardrobe beneath Ma's clothes, where she tucks him in safely at night, in case Old Nick comes.

Room is home to Jack, but to Ma, it's the prison where she's been held since she was nineteen-for seven long years. Through her fierce love for her son, she has created a life for him in that eleven-by-eleven foot space. But Jack's curiosity is building alongside ma's own desperation, and she knows that Room cannot contain either indefinitely...

Told in the inventive, funny, and poignant voice of Jack, Room is a celebration of resilience-and a powerful story of a mother and son whose love lets them survive the impossible.

~Book Jacket

Review

Astounding. An original story that has a "ripped-from-the-headlines" horror to it, Donoghue through the wonderful Jack manages to convey equal parts horror and joy. The narration from Jack is touching and innocent, and gives the story more power than if it were narrated from Ma's perspective. The love that exists between him and Ma are enough to propel this novel into a classic mother-son story, but the context of the novel and the themes make it searing prose that can't be forgotten.

Room is a wonderfully written story that will stay with you long after you finish it.

This is not a light read and there are those who have been unable to finish it due to the dark subject matter. I would recommend this book for those interested in sociology, family relations, psychology and anyone who likes a good read.

-K.C