St. Oswald’s caters to the privileged and gifted sons of families and seeks to provide a rigorous liberal arts education to the young men who attend the hallowed institution.  With nearly a thousand students roaming the halls of academia, the expectations for each individual student is high.  The school does everything in it’s power to maintain the balance between tradition and evolving education.  This begins and ends with carefully selected faculty members, administrators, and staff whose only duty is to stoke the light of knowledge within each student.

But like many schools built on centuries of mores and expectations, mustiness pervades the corridors.  Chinks and cracks form in the bricks.  Windows accumulate dust until a fine layer of translucent grime covers their panes.  The history of the school rests on the success of its many pupils, but no history is complete without a touch of scandal and a hint of the sordid.  Above all, it is maintaining the inherent dignity of the name, St. Oswald’s, that drives teachers and students alike.

Roy Straitley, the sole remaining classics teacher at the esteemed school, has withstood the passage of time, bravely fought off the introduction of technology, maintained the decency to wear his school robes to teach in, and operates on the firm belief that his pupils are individuals to be respected and nurtured.  The faces of his students and colleagues may change, but St. Oswald’s remains the same unwavering bastion of education it has always been.  “Quaz” (as Straitley his nicknamed by the kids) is old school.  He recites Latin quotes to his colleagues while drinking tea from the same mug he always has.  However, this school year starts off with Straitley in the middle of a turf war with the German teachers who have continually been trying to take over his office and room.  These machinations annoy him to no end, but as the year progresses, those annoyances fade to dull murmur as things at St. Oswald’s rapidly and dangerously spin out of control.  What Roy doesn’t know is that someone has infiltrated the fiber of the school, and they are plotting to tear it apart from the inside out.

Joanne Harris weaves two narratives together to bring the past and present workings of this revered private school to life, and she does so in such a way that the readers find themselves putting the clues together at the same pace as they unfold in the book. The narrators, one of which is Roy Straitley, tell parallel stories from their alternating perspectives.  Woven in to their thoughts are the stories from their past that have not only left their imprint but continue to drive them in their actions.

Amazingly, the author manages to write from two very different perspectives, and the narrators each have their own distinct personality and style.  This is especially important since there are not too many ways to initially distinguish who is narrating each chapter.  This also allows the reader to fully engage with both narrators and encourages the necessary empathy needed to appreciate the astounding climax to the story.

This is a book well worth reading, but please don’t take any ideas away from it.

Harris, Joanne. Gentlemen and Players. New York: HarperCollins, 2006.

The Erard Piano was, by all accounts, the most popular piano of the late 1700′s and early 1800′s.  An international success, the piano inhabited the most illustrious homes around the world.  They were even commissioned by King Louis XVI for the royal French courts.  While they have fallen out of favor in the last century or so, their influence on the piano industry will forever be remembered.  It is this type of piano, the Erard, in the midst of the British occupation of Burma in 1886 upon which Daniel Mason’s subtle exploration of the human mind revolves.

Edgar Drake is a piano tuner.  Passionate about his craft, obsessive about the minutia, Drake spends his days tuning the pianos of London’s wealthier music patrons.  Therefore, he is surprised when the British War Office commissions him to participate in their war efforts in Burma.  One of their key officers in the work to pacify the Burmese, Dr. Anthony Carroll, has requested a tuner be sent out to tune his Erard piano.  Called in to her Majesty’s service, Edgar is filled with excitement and trepidation.  The prospect of leaving the safety of his established life and traveling by train and by ship to the far reaches of the British Empire whets Edgar’s appetite for adventure, and he embarks on the journey of a lifetime.

As he sets out from England, traveling by boat past the mysteries of Northern Africa and on through the Suez Canal, he becomes captivated by the mysterious Dr. Anthony Carroll.  A surgeon turned Major, Carroll is brokering peace with most martial of the Burmese tribes, and he seems to be doing it through completely unorthodox and non violent methods.  The closer the piano tuner gets to his destination, the more the mystery deepens.  Like a moth to a flame, the reader is given the impression that Edgar Drake is slowly spiraling toward some greater event in which his work will be the key that unlocks Dr. Anthony Carroll’s ambitions in Burma.

There is something to be said for the idea of the “journey” being just as important as the “destination”.  However, in a historical mystery of this proportion, I would say that the destination is pretty important.  Mason, the author, gets lost in the journey.  His descriptions of the world the piano tuner moves through are vivid and enchanting.  He does a tremendous job of offering the reader plenty of opportunities to think through events without overly narrating, and even when some events feel random and obscure, they are vividly brought to life.  However, by the time the novel draws to a close, there is a strong sense that somewhere along the way, something was missed.

The story feels familiar on a literary level.  At times, I felt like I might be reading a less noirish version of Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness.  I haven’t taken too much extra time to compare the mesmerizing character of Kurtz with that of Dr. Carroll, but the overall experience feels very similar.  Edgar Drake’s journey into the depths of Burma and the subsequent stories of Carroll create the kind of mystery about Carroll that Marlow felt for Kurtz.  Unfortunately, The Piano Tuner never quite succeeds in the same way that Heart of Darkness did. But as a read about the beauty and exotic locals of a far gone time, the book recreates the enchantment people must have felt when every trip abroad promised adventure.

Mason, Daniel. The Piano Tuner. Alfred A. Knopf: New York, 2002.

The author spends copious time setting the stage for his two main characters.  One is Mikael Blomkvist, a die-hard journalist renowned for his willingness to sink his teeth into a story and not let go until it is finished.  Blomkvist starts the novel on the wrong side of the law, having recently been misled by a source and left to fend for himself among his own ravenous journalist peers.  After being sentenced to prison for a short time and then released, he finds himself targeted by a wealthy titan of industry who has a troubling and mysterious past that needs to be solved.  In return for this man’s financial promises, Mikael must spend a year working to uncover the truth that has for so long eluded all those involved

The second character, referred to in the novels’ titles as “The Girl”, is Lisbeth Salandar, a young woman with a startling past, a host of medically diagnosed neurological disorders, a photographic memory, and a penchant for computer hacking.  Lisbeth has her own troubling and mysterious past, yet it is her present that is the most disquieting.  Cared for by an abusive state representative, we quickly realize that the girl with the dragon tattoo is a force to be reckoned with.  As she works toward attaining her own goal of independence from the state, she takes a job working for Mikael Blomvkist.

The two lives become irrevocably intertwined, and the author takes on us on a dizzying journey into the depths of human depravity and injustice, a place where those entrusted with the care of others are morally derelict, and the reader is swept in and out of the very best and worst of human society.

There are a few books I have read, and due to their content, decided not to watch the movie because just the experience of reading was heart rending enough.  The Kite Runner is one such novel.  I have now added The Millennium Trilogy to the list.  As hard as it is to recognize that people will often sacrifice their own values for their own selfishness or even a misconceived greater good, it is even harder to read about the people who are savagely ignored and injured by those choices.   I was shocked to read that the author of these books very much resembles his main character, and it makes me wonder how closely aligned are these plots and real life.  I hope there is a distinct separation between his fiction and our realities.

Max Brooks has written a book that combines the traditional view of zombies with a much more modern setting that takes the reader back to that initial fear first felt when zombies descended on small towns to feast on the flesh of the living.  World War Z is a sequel of sorts to what should be a household staple, The Zombie Survival Guide.  How people can sleep at night without an escape plan in case of a zombie attack, I don’t know.  But this latest book, WWZ, takes us past a step-by-step survival plan, and picks up the story after the attack has already happened.  In this version of the world, the zombies have already infested the planet, lurching their way through each country as the governments struggle to at first contain the outbreak, then control it, and finally, fight it.  From the first cases to the fall of nations, the entire struggle is detailed rather brilliantly through personal narratives of those who went through.

Brooks acts as a journalist interviewing those people who lived through the traumatic events.  His interviewees include doctors, government aides, soldiers, civilians and criminals.  Each interview manages to touch on a portion of the world’s struggle with zombies to create a picture which encompasses everything.  Like his previous book, The Zombie Survival Guide, Brooks uses this novel to critique the societies we live.  While it may be impossible to imagine that zombies ever have or will exist, the way in which people, communities, cities and governments deal with the threat in Brooks’ book don’t seem too far fetched from events that have and are currently taking place in the world.  He details a frightening fictional topic, but it is how he imbues it with a sense of reality that leaves you truly terrified.  A doctor is thrust into a room with the deceased bound and shackled.  A mother finds her children being dragged away in the night.   Russian soldiers attempting to flee the infection are forced to murder their own comrades.  A flood of refugees clogs a road in India and hundreds are trampled as the military loses control of the evacuation.   These personal tales bring the stories of the undead to life.

Is that too cheesy?

Due to the popularity of Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings series, most fantasy books followed a similar plot arc complete with fictional maps, expansive histories, richly imagined languages, and epic adventures.  Hobbits were untouchable, but elves, dwarves, gnomes, orcs, trolls and wizards lived on.

Star Wars also influenced many science fiction books, replacing stories like 2001: A Space Odyssey with swashbuckling space tales.  Spaceships no longer plodded through space, swords became standard fare, and roguish pirates were all the rage thanks to Han Solo

But that was back in the day.

In my mind, The Bartimaeus Trilogy bucks those trends in favor of more modern ones.

With the explosion of Harry Potter onto the lit scene (a book I first heard about from my friend’s Dutch parents when I was in college), wizards and magicians have been thrown into modern times and are no longer relegated to Middle Earths or even Medieval times.  Similarly, the success of Twilight (for proof of success see the review of Breaking Dawn in a previous posting) has spawned vampire and werewolf stories set in the midst of urban, modern areas.

The Bartimaeus Trilogy follows a similar suit.  Magicians have ascended to prominent positions (Prime Minister, Chief of Security etc) in the English government and throughout Europe because of the power they wield.  In what is a very nice touch, the author locates the power of the magicians in “demons” which are summoned and forced into servitude.  Magicians who can summon powerful demons to do their bidding are therefore more powerful and achieve greater status.

Unfortunately for the magicians, the demons do not enjoy being torn from their homes and forced to live a life of servitude.  If a magician were ever to get careless, the demon would immediately set upon the magician and kill him or her.  This threat ensures that magicians treat their demons with cruelty, caution and arrogance.  Magicians despise demons, demons despise magicians,  and so the cycle continues.

All of this leads us to Nathaniel, a small boy living under the tutelage of a rather ordinary magician who cruelly mistreats him and doesn’t recognize the boy’s immense potential.

The boy lashes out at this cruel treatment by summoning the powerful demon, Bartimaeus.

Bartimaeus has the ego of a Greek hero, the wit of a British comedian, and more sarcasm then even, well, me.  His outrage at being summoned by a mere boy to carry out childish whims leads him to say and do all sorts of humorous and potentially dangerous things.  Every few paragraphs we are treated to Bartimaeus’ narcissistic footnotes to his personal history.

After Nathaniel is humiliated by some elder magicians who firmly believe in the phrase “might makes right”, he sets Bartimaeus on a task to steal one of the magicians most powerful charms, the Amulet of Samarkand.  In doing so, Nathaniel unwittingly uncovers a plot to overthrow the current Prime Minister and puts himself and others around him in excessive danger.

Jonathan Stroud, the author, sets up an odd dynamic.  The expected hero of the story, Nathaniel, becomes as unpleasant as protagonists come.  His ambition makes him naive, unsavory, cold-hearted, and eventually gains him a foothold in the government at the expense of his soul (not literally).  On the other hand, Bartimaeus, who has very little free will of  his own, quickly wins the reader over to his side through his humor, feisty temperament and surprising grasp of what it means to be morally good.

Over the three books, the two characters trade barbs, indulge in their historical enmity, and generally don’t get along unless they have to.  By tracing the arc of Nathaniel’s maturity through his adventures with Bartimaeus, the reader comes to care about both characters and along the way there are gripping plot twists and exciting battles.

These books were certainly enjoyable and should resonate with many young adults.  There is no shortage of gore and death, and the author finds time to sprinkle in a bit of romance while he is busy setting the stage for magical machinations and enthralling escapades.

Stroud, Jonathan.  The Amulet of Samarkand. New York: Hyperion Books, 2003.

Ruiz Zafon’s second novel inhabits a similar space. His first novel, The Shadow of the Wind, was brought to my attention by a Chilean friend of mine who typically enjoys novels infused with magical realism.  Authors such as Isabel Allende and Garci Marquez frequently add touches of magical realism to their stories.  In my mind, The Shadow of the Wind turned out to be a wonderful novel and a very engaging read.  The love struck but unlucky teenager who discovers a mysterious book only to find out that copies of it are systematically being destroyed winds up in a number of macabre situations which propels the reader around Barcelona in the mid 1900’s.  Brilliant book.

The Angel’s Game, also set in Barcelona and scantly but firmly linked to The Shadow of the Wind, introduces us to another teenager.  From a broken home he slowly raises himself out of poverty by working for a newspaper and sheltering himself under the wing of an older writer.  This time Barcelona is recovering from WWI, and our young protagonist, David Martin, aspires to be a novelist.  As he slowly builds a name for himself over the years through his pulp fiction, he struggles to be the writer he wants to be until a French publisher by the name of Andreas Corelli commissions him to write a book.  But the money and good fortune that goes with the commission quickly dwindles, and David Martin slowly uncovers not only the twisted history of the house he lives in, but also the dangerous game his employer is playing with him.  There are subtle and not so subtle hints that the man behind the lucrative contract might be the Devil himself, the Bringer of Light.  The more enmeshed be becomes in the history surrounding him, the darker the gothic shadows that try to envelop him.

This time around, Ruiz Zafon fills his novel with enough twists and turns to make even the staunchest stomach weak.  As a hero, or perhaps an anti-hero, David does not provide the type of credibility one would need to sustain such a incongruous plot, and I found myself often wondering who was going crazy, myself or Mr. Martin?  The author has no problems painting Barcelona as a city filled with sinister alleys, morbid histories, and people who in one way or another are damned.  But as the story quickly unravels and re-winds itself into different shapes, David’s experiences never quite connect to form the same sort of cohesive thriller as in the first novel.  I have checked the bookshelf every time I visit the bookstore for a new novel from this author (look under R, not Z), and it might be natural that I created too great of expectations.   However, when the way got rough, I plowed ahead because I know what the author is capable of, and even here when he gets it right, you cannot question his sense of morbidity.  His unpredictable characters inhabit a world of shadows and mystery and they will stick with you even after you’ve stopped reading.  I still have hope that the third installment will take me back to the same magic I experienced the first time around.

Cover your heart!

Ruiz Zafon, Carlos. The Angel’s Game, Doubleday, New York, 2009.

Review: Henry Townsend, once a slave belonging to William Robbins, the son of Augustus Townsend (who bought himself out of slavery at the age off 22) and Mildred Townsend (purchased out of slavery by Augustus at the age of 26) was himself freed by his loving parents somewhere around 1843 when he too was entering his twenties. Due to the fact that Henry continued to be the property of William Robbins during the intervening years before his freedom, as well as the fact that his parents were only allowed to see Henry on Sundays, the relationship between the newly freed son and his parents struggled to live up to the promise that freedom held. Their unease with each other grows even more once Henry Townsend, a freed black man, purchases his own slaves.

Henry continues to amass wealth through the purchase of slaves, and he attempts to run his property to the best of his abilities. The advice that William Robbins, the owner of 113 slaves and Henry’s former master, gives him helps Henry keep his human chattel in line. Henry marries Caldonia, and it is Caldonia who must take over when Henry dies unexpectedly. She struggles to keep the estate running properly, and her life and the lives of the slaves she owns and is left to preside over disintegrate around her at an ever increasing pace until she cannot hold onto to what is hers.
Recommendation: This is not just the story of Henry or Caldonia, nor is it just the story of the slave Moses or the white slave-owner William Robbins. This story unravels the lives of each character and then weaves them together to present an unflinching and revealing look at slavery in its varied and conflicting forms. There are authors out there to be compared to. Faulkner. Morrison. But I don’t think this book is merely a combination of the two. There is a daring in this story that challenges the reader. Like the moment when Henry first slaps his own slave, this book reaches out and snaps us out of our own reverie.
For a long time slavery has been about black and white. Slaves were motivated by the desire to be free, and whites were motivated by power or greed or maybe compassion. In The Known World motivations are as disparate as the colors of skin. Each character struggles with the demands and expectations of a world defined by not only the law but also the racially charged interpretations of it. This is an eye-opening and challenging tale that is well worth exploring. It is deserved of the praise bestowed upon it.

Jones, Edward P.. The Known World, Harper Collins, New York, 2003.

Currently Reading: Shutter Island by Dennis Lehane

On Deck: The Enchantress of Florence by Salman Rushdie

Recommendation: Let’s face it: most books that make it into movies are good. Whether the movie is good or not is another matter. This book is no different. Its rich character exploration, highlighted by the first person narrative, will seduce the reader with both direct and coy story telling. There is nothing flashy in the writing. Like the character of Hanna Schmitz ,it is blunted and unwavering. This is a simple book about simple people in a complicated world. Those two things cannot help but collide.
But there is something to be said for a book like this. It catches the reader off guard and then leans in until the balance one hopes to maintain is almost impossible to regain. When all is said and done, when the last page is turned, life goes back to normal only because the writing has stopped. I am positive that the story will continue to resound even after you hear the last scrape of the page as you turn it.

Schlink, Bernard. The Reader, Vintage Books, New York, 1999.

Currently Reading: The Known World by Edward P. Jones

On Deck: Matter by Iain Banks

Two rogues swindle and fight their way through the bloodthirsty and brutal landscapes of the 10th century. Amram, a towering pillar of virility, carries a giant axe known for its propensity to remove heads from necks. His companion is Zelikman, a scarecrow of a man clad all in black who uses a much less devastating but no less effective physicians lance. Their tongues are nearly as nimble as their weapons of choice and get them into and out of more trouble than a lifetime needs. Like two amiable brothers, they carry a strong bond between them, and they work together to separate the drunken and debauched from their money as easily as possible. They are mercenaries, criminals, thieves. They are gentlemen of the road, but when one of their plans goes awry, the two find themselves entangled in a war between nations, and they are forced to choose what is right and what is wrong.

Filaq is the son of a murdered war king whose land and power was stripped during a coup. Far too young to defend himself, Filaq is lucky to escape with the old keeper of the war king’s pachyderms. The old man sees that Amram and Zelikman can help the young boy escape those who hunt him down, and the two accept the job with their eyes firmly fixed on the reward they will receive when they the deliver the boy to his wealthy relatives. But things are never so easy. Filaq’s desire for vengeance drives him to either escape his new guardians or hurl invectives at them from various trussed up positions. And if that isn’t enough, to add injury to insults, Filaq winds up in the hands of those they were protecting him against. When Amram and Zelikman choose to go after him, they are embroiled in espionage, intrigue and a brewing conflict between savage Northern hordes and Khazars.

Recommendation: Michael Chabon is one of my favorite authors. Similar to most favorite Michaels of mine, he can do wrong. Sure, Jordan may have a gambling a problem, and Jackson is not the same guy that wrote Billie Jean twenty years ago, but they were still great at what they did, and you can’t take that away from them. At this point, Chabon has not retired nor has he gone Wacko Jacko, so rest assured that his writing career is still on track. This book is proof of that.

While it does not reflect the humorous pessimism of The Yiddish Policeman’s Union or the biting reality of his short stories, it captures the spirit of what imagination is all about. The two protagonists, polar opposite brethren, are reminiscent of the heroes that we love: the reluctant hero. Like many of the protagonists of books I’ve reviewed, including Ender Wiggyn in Ender’s Game or Lev Beniov in The City of Thieves, the two men are not concerned with saving many people besides themselves, but they wind up knee deep in conflict and being the heroes that people need. Like the two smugglers Han Solo and Chewbacca, Amram and Zilekman go searching for fortune and glory and getting much more than they bargained for.

The book is set in a time period that I am not very familiar with (950 A.D.), but the setting becomes natural as the scope of the tale becomes broader and broader. Each twist of the plot entangles the reader further into the journey of these two men, and I enjoyed ever page of it. I was never confused long enough to let it get in the way of my read, and by the time I was finished with the novel, I wanted only to be able to read more about the adventures of Zilekman and Amram.

Chabon, Michael. Gentlemen of the Road, Del Rey Books, New York, 2008.

Currently Reading: Pillars of Earth by Ken Follett

On Deck: The Savage Detectives by Roberto Bolano

Review: This book records the life and times of Enzo the dog. Enzo is part labrador, part poodle and german-shepherd, unofficially part terrier (because terriers are problem-solvers, and Enzo would like to believe that he comes from “a determined gene pool”) and wholly sagacious. Plucked as a pup from the lap of his mother by Denny Swift, Enzo becomes fast friends with his new owner. Frustrated by his lack of thumbs, lips that cannot pronounce words, and inability to sit on a toilet and flush it, Enzo works hard both to understand his master and to be understood. Surprisingly, television finally serves a useful purpose, and Enzo becomes assimilated to the urban world he inhabits through days spent watching T.V. while waiting for Denny to return home. The two share a common bond: race car driving. Denny possesses an uncanny ability behind the wheel, especially when weather conditions in the Pacific Northwest make track conditions far from ideal. The two, master and dog, share in Denny’s dream, but life gets in the way and they both must find ways to cope with the harrowing turns that are thrown at them.

Denny begins to make a life for himself. He gets married and soon finds himself with a beautiful wife and baby daughter. Enzo, despite feeling marginalized by these new arrivals, manages to see past these giant upheavals in his and Denny’s life. Uneasy truces are created, then solidified, bonds are forged, and the two becomes three and three becomes four, and Enzo becomes part of a family. And while Denny’s dream seems to suffer from the advent of his wife and daughter, he accepts his new responsibilities stoically and finds new joys.

Then Denny is given a chance to go back to what he loves, and he is presented with the opportunity to be part of a racing team. He studies and prepares. He wants to be ready to seize the chance that has been given to him. Enzo, his wife Eve, and his daughter Zoe support him as he leaves for days at a time to race. But just as Denny’s life seems to be coming together, Enzo watches it unfold around him. With no ability to communicate, he does everything he can to support Denny as the days grow bleaker and the clouds grow darker.

Recommendation: Garth Stein will be giving a talk at Charles Wright Academy on January 15, at 2:00 p.m. Admittedly, this book probably would not have fallen in my hands otherwise. While I love animals (even my former bloodthirsty dog, Grendel), I hate car racing. Nothing but right turns (it could be left, I am not sure). But Garth Stein, a Northwest native, turned racing into something greater, and at the heart of it is the wise and loving dog. Enzo anchors this narrative through his perceptive comments and also his inability to act. He shows the reader sides of life that might normally go unnoticed and even makes the reader be a touch more self-conscious about how people behave not only towards animals but also towards ourselves. Even at its most heart wrenching, Enzo is there to help get through it.

Oddly enough, I’d recently read a short story that is written through the perspective of a dog. Dave Eggers has an interesting story in his collection “How We are Hungry”. The dog at the heart of that story is wholly a dog, and Garth Stein gives us much more. Enzo is not some wild spirit barking unnecessarily at passing cars or running without abandon to go sniff the crotch of strangers. He is imbued with a soul to be envied, and I would not be surprised to learn that people who read this book view their dog differently for some time. It is a difficult journey that Denny and Enzo undertake, but it is one well worth being a part of.

Stein, Garth. The Art of Racing in the Rain, Harpercollins, New York, 2008.

Currently Reading: Gentlemen of the Road by Michael Chabon

On Deck: At Random by Bennett Cerf