Quichotte by Salman Rushdie

Not for everyone, for sure, QUICHOTTE [pronounced key-shot] fluctuates between satire and magical realism, and within the blueprint of Cervantes’ Don Quixote mixed with Moby Dick, Pinocchio and a smattering of mythology. You will enjoy the references and the parody. 

Between the Gods and mortal men and women, there hung a veil, and its name was maya. The truth was the fabled world of the gods was the real one, while the supposedly actual world inhabited by human beings was an illusion, and maya, the veil of illusion, was the magic by which the gods persuaded men and women that their illusory world was real.

A lost soul turned dreamer searches for his idealized beloved. A companion, in the form of an imagined child, comes to life. An opportunistic businessman tramples ethics. An adoring wife hopes to secure the family legacy with philanthropy [think Sacklers.] A Bollywood actress turned talk show host struggles under the weight of celebrity [and fentanyl.] And, a high-profile advocate pedals integrity to the apathetic.

She was a privileged woman complaining about small things. A woman whose life was lived on the surface, who had chosen superficiality, had no right to complain about the absence of depth. Human life was lived between two chasms, a Russian writer had said, the one that preceded our birth, “the cradle rocks above an abyss,” and the one we were all “heading for, at some forty-five hundred heartbeats an hour].”

            Brown [Indian mostly] confronting white [white supremacists mostly] and all in fear of the “other.” Sound familiar?

            Yes, it’s a mixed-up story, often humorous, sometimes maddening, and with an often confusing set of characters – multiple characters with multiple names on parallel but intersecting paths. Rushdie is also sketching a tale of what-ifs and false narratives. And, for good measure, includes sexually damaged women and sexually mutable men. No stone unturned here.

            Rushdie, no stranger to pointing the finger at evil-doers [once subject to a fatwa by Iranian religious leaders] seems to have decided to go after all the quirks of Western civilization, most notably capitalism and pop-culture, aided and abetted by. 24/7 TV. He also cites Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance and The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, books favored by wanderers.

            It was bewildering at such an advanced age to understand that the narrative of your family which you had carried within you – within which, in a way, you had lived – was false, or, at the very least, that you had been ignorant of its most essential truth, which had been kept from you. Not to be told the whole truth, as Sister with her legal expertise would know perfectly well, was to be told a lie.

            Frankly, I loved reading this novel. I looked forward to a block of time to immerse myself in his ingenuity – one must read for prolonged periods of time or get totally lost. I laughed. I cringed at painful truths. I marveled at his command of language and history. On the other hand, Rushdie once too often goes off the rails – rambling beyond a willing suspension of disbelief – and I agree with the critics who suggest he reign in pontification for the sake of storytelling.

            Perhaps Rushdie created in this novel his own impossible dream, where fictional characters bring out the best in each other, battle windmills and redeem themselves of their sins, although along the way, they create messes for the unsuspecting, or the opportunistic, to deal with. 

            Read at your own risk. If nothing else, Quichotte is exquisitely crafted and unforgettable.

The Third Hotel by Laura VanDenBerg

Metaphysical meets magical realism in Cuba. 

Van Den Berg’s second novel [she’s also published two impressive story collections] may be the book to elevate her stature to where she belongs. She is a superb novelist and this wholly original exploration of the nature of time and loss, and recovery, might make you feel as unmoored as I felt at the last page, unmoored as a confrontation with your own fragility.

Clare’s husband, a horror film aficionado, has been killed in a freak accident and she attends in his place a horror film festival in Havana, where she sees him on the street. Or does she? Of course, she follows, from a distance, at first.

In THE THIRD HOTEL, little is linear, yet you are not confused. Much is irrational, yet it all makes sense. There is plenty of foreboding, without finality. Nothing is supernatural or frightening, yet if feels like a story by Edgar Allen Poe: vaguely disturbing, a little off-beat and totally fascinating.

Clare is a woman who keeps secrets. She prefers her guard up. Her job is practical and logistical, otherwise disinteresting. Her childhood was a bit odd. Now her father has Alzheimer’s. She has lost her compass, and that’s the central point. Think of the theory of relativity or black holes. Time is fluid. Lives are fluid. Like the eels that slink around an award-winning film at the festival or the Zombies that frequent that genre – creatures, and people, can be alive but not alive. Here but not here. Past, present and future are entwined.

Of course, marriage had not let her to a sense of completeness. Rather, it introduced different sets of questions, one after another, and ultimately led her to the drastic incompleteness of being married to a man whose death, the exact circumstances, was uncertain. If a death was uncertain, a life in turn was made uncertain – or the uncertainty that had always been there was exposed.

It’s a journey, not so much of the clock but of personal discovery. One must let go of preconceptions, obligations or a sense of destination in order to find and face truth, and then move on.

I was spellbound from page one, where the unusual title is explained. Exquisitely crafted. Frequent moments of ah-hah, that’s so true! An eclectic set of characters, a striking city, that uniquely vibrant Cuban landscape contrasted with spare elegant prose. I’d call this novel one of the best this year, for me, and well reviewed, although not commercially hot. Highly recommended. Spread the word.

Olive, Again... Wow, Again

Since Elizabeth Strout burst on the literary scene in 1998 with the novel “Amy and Isabelle” she has been revealing less than attractive truths about small town America in extremely attractive prose. Her fictional town of Crosby, where much of her fiction has been set, is a microcosm of the American culture – neighbors whose personal narratives are unfathomable and often astray while their motives can be mysterious despite ostensibly simple in design. In this place we find marriages without passion, angry spouses, false friends, repressed children, misogyny and harassment… And all, once again, under the watchful eye of the irrepressible incorrigible, often intolerable, but nonetheless captivating, Olive Kittredge, the heroine of the eponymous novel that won Strout the Pulitzer Prize. She’s back in the aptly named, “Olive, Again.”

I confess, when I began reading this book, I wondered, briefly, why the author, and reader, should go back to Olive, to her often warped perception and harsh rules, or why I wanted to return to that town, and those small town people, but, in a matter of pages, it is clear: the cast of characters is not only a fascination, and the prose exquisitely crafted, but we need to go back there to be reminded of all that ails us and what might redeem us.

In the end, to forgive Olive, to understand her and sympathize with her, is what we all need to do for each other.

Olive’s second husband says it best: He understood that he was a seventy-four-year-old man who looks back at life and marvels that it unfolded as it did, who feels unbearable regrets for all the mistakes made. And then he thought: How does one live an honest life?

Strout says she took six years to write that first novel, but clearly those characters remained in her heart and on her mind. [And watch for a timely reappearance.] Who knows how many stories of the fictional town residents she has logged over time to resurface at just the right moment in just the right book, most taking place in that same place.

Here, a decade after her first appearance, Olive woos us again with her determination to understand herself, as well as her friends and neighbors and, again, with her surprising compassion for those least understood, those least seen, as if she has a filter through which she observes those who need the most and miss what’s right in front of her eyes that matters more. And, we are right there with her as she grapples with age.

It was almost panic that she felt. “Damn man” she said, and she meant the doctor, who was still young and had no idea – he had no idea – what it was like to be old and alone. But other days she felt okay. Not wonderful. But she could drive and get her groceries and she visited her friend Edith at that awful old folks’ home she lived in called Maple Tree Apartments. Then when she came home she was glad to be there, although she could not shake the feeling that it was Jack’s house. She sat in Jack’s chair these days so that she wouldn’t have to look at it gapingly empty. And sometimes as she sat there a deep sadness trembled through her…

Olive is as real as it gets. The new novel lives up to its origin story and, as award-winning writer Pico Iyer said recently, Strout may be the most important fiction voice today. In their deceptively simple way, she and Olive speak for us all. As Olive would say, What a thing!

THE WEIGHT OF INK by Rachel Kaddish

Rachel Kaddish

“The Weight of Ink” is in the spirit of “Possession” the great novel by A. S. Byatt, although that was a mind-bending tale of secret passions and this is an understated novel of faith. Both use the literary technique of parallel tales, in this case London in the 1660s and in 2000, and also the discovery of medieval writings of historical significance. Both also feature two scholars – an academic and, and in this case, an arrogant graduate student – both in search of enlightenment as well as connection to repressed passions.

The novel reveals the often overlooked history of the migration of Spanish/Portuguese Jews, post-Inquisition, to Amsterdam and then to England. Known as Marrano Jews, they were previously forced to live as Christians, following their faith in secret, until they were permitted in England to observe Judaism but with few other rights. 

Kaddish introduces a fictional Marrano rabbi and his scribe – a young woman with unusual intellect and curiosity. In 2000, the scholars discover her writings and set about to uncover her story.

The novel is a testament to what I fear is the diminishing art of scholarship. In the new millennium we have so much information at our fingertips and a subsequent propensity to come quickly to conclusions. [But I digress.] More to the point, we have here another story of a woman trying to rise above her limitations and her station. She’s a terrific character who charts a unique course, and both scholars find in her pursuit the answer to their questions.  

The Christians, it seemed to Ester, wished to fathom the mechanism of the soul: by which levers did it pull the body into motion, and by which was it pulled by the divine? Yet the rabbis had little concern for such deliberation. What, they wished to know, were the minute instructions for doing God’s will? How most the economy of devotion be paid in laws of kashrut, in decorations of house and body, in the number of repetitions of a prayer… how were laws for behavior to be observed under this and that specific circumstance… the distance between the two manners of thought seemed to hold the key to something she couldn’t name. Must the two – the Christian and the Hebrew, the soul and the measurable, tangible world – remain disconnected?

There is a subtle element of mystery and suspense throughout and a powerful narrative arc, with exceptional historic detail and contemplations of faith. Beyond the history, there is the evolution of characters past and present. The great Toni Morrison said it best on the book cover: “A gifted writer, astonishingly adept at nuance, narration, and the politics of passion.” Agreed.

A literary journey for those who like to snuggle into a big book with sufficient twists and turns, clarity of prose and compelling characters to keep you cozy.

Along the narrow street, youths hauled sacks of sand, an ink vendor cried his wares, saltpeter men hauled stained sacks through a stable door. A girl leading a milch-ass knocked on a door and, when there was no answer, leaned her forehead to the door with a bleary call for any with babies in need of milk. Above the street, signboards mutely announced their wares – one carved in the shape of a mortar and pestle, another in the shape of a barrel of ale, another painted with a picture of crockery, that the unlettered might know where to enter with their coin. And now the road sloped downward beneath her shoes – first the slightest dip, barely perceptible. Then a steeper slope, as though not only her feet but the whole city were rushing toward the river.

Enjoy the journey.