"The Secret Papers of Madame Olivetti" by Annie Vanderbilt

With its clever structure and highly personal content, The Secret Papers of Madame Olivetti captures the struggle of one woman to forgive herself for imagined transgressions in her past. Protagonist Lily recalls a continuing series of sensual encounters, some of which cause her guilt, and from which we are never very far. In fact, I recognize these as the best descriptions of a woman’s sensuality I have ever encountered. Author Annie Vanderbilt guides our tour very effectively, and I will always honor her for that. After a promising start, however, Madame Olivetti unfortunately bogs down from the weight of guilt, delusion, and the life lessons that come too late for the most deserving characters.

Through a series of highly effective erotic scenes, which are not explicit but just very well done, we understand a central feature of Lily’s nature. She bestows her men with love and shares her sensuality generously with them – and most of these episodes occur with her husband Paul as they try to build a family. Lily occupies Paul’s ancestral home in the south of France for a month each summer, and the summer after he dies suddenly of a heart attack, she sets herself the task of putting her guilt-ridden thoughts down on paper, using an aged manual Olivetti typewriter. Her local friends help her see that her guilt stems from a delusion: she thinks she conceived her daughter while having an affair in Mexico (some of the best, dreamiest sensual writing in the book), but an old photograph and a matriarch’s memory help her see the error of her ways.

Ms. Vanderbilt constructs a clever framework in which she allows Lily to tell her story, and interposes a current-events narrative in which her widowed heroine does the writing (while finding yet another partner for rewarding sex). The author slowly reveals Lily’s fraught emotional state to us, but then we find out it’s all a mistake, based on a series of graphically-told emotional losses and doubts. This book’s main reward lies in the effectiveness and clarity of Lily’s internal dialogue. It is constructed on a mistaken and damaging guilt in the main character that I had a hard time crediting, although the author gives it a very game try.

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"The Transit of Venus" by Shirley Hazzard

One can assume the characters in Shirley Hazzard’s The Transit of Venus have guiding principles in their lives, a moral framework by which to behave. After all, they lead exemplary outward lives for the most part. However, when Venus transits between them and their principles, when love gets in the way, everything turns to heartache and loss. For multiple characters, thoughts run toward suicide.

Some of what follows will make the reader think this is a dreary or depressing book, because people do suffer disappointment and yearning, sometimes for many years. But the experience of reading The Transit of Venus will redeem you; the author’s rich prose concoction not only intoxicates on an aesthetic level, but also stimulates reflection on the vagaries of human relationships.

This novel lives in several thematic neighborhoods. One thought Ms. Hazzard repetitively focuses on is the insurmountable gap between what people feel and what they say. She expresses this chasm in chopped-up, incomplete conversational sentences, in which trite and over-worn phrases are thought of, and not always even spoken. People speak or think in these fragments and the effect is extraordinary and blunting. People hide their emotions from everyone except themselves. Several times, while the author was carrying this off, I wanted to yell at the character, “Get real for once! Just say what’s on your mind.”

Morality is another lynchpin here. And by morality I mean scale which measures what people do or don’t do for each other – the balance of their motivation: does it tilt toward themselves or toward others? This book is replete with selfishness, particularly on the part of the male characters. Characters keep a running score of the ebb and flow of personal power in relationships (or Ms. Hazzard does it for them), and the tides of these skirmishes shift back and forth in single conversations. (That feature reminded me of Henry James, except it has a clear narrative flow.)

A tall, lovely woman named Caroline (“Caro”) Bell lives at the center of this narrative, and is thoroughly buffeted by its events. Her sister Grace is lovely too, with a strong resemblance to Caro, albeit more lightly complected. Because of a fatal accident on a Sydney Harbor ferry in which they lose both parents, the sisters grow up with a relation named Dora, who is stunningly selfish and self-dramatizing – always working for advantage through a combination of brow-beating and playing the martyr. The girls reach adulthood in Great Britain with grave misgivings about life and people, and barely have the wherewithal to support each other. The inclination is there, but the training, or custom, is not.

Enter the men: Paul Ivory is a handsome, fashionable playwright, at ease with others either singly or in large groups. It isn’t long before Caro falls in love with him. Ted Tice, an astronomer, falls in love with Caro at about the same time. Christian Thrale, son of a stuffy, distinguished scientist, opts for Grace early on, considering Caro a bit too rich for his blood. Relationships come and go – or let’s say the assignations are there for the plucking – and the men generally skirt around the consequences, playing havoc with the female populace. Caro’s Paul marries into nobility and money, but Caro eventually finds an American philanthropist, happiness and marriage, in New York.  Quite near the end of the book, the reason for the continual and unexplained emotional undercurrent – the hatred and recrimination displayed mostly by Ted and Paul – becomes clear. Suffice it to say, the final alignments are what they should be.

The stunning emotional depth of this novel – Ms. Hazzard catches with pinpoint precision the internal dialogs of love and pain and yearning – gives it its great gravitas. That, and the author’s clear moral stance. The emotions are obviously a great strength – this book plumbs even greater depths than her National Book Award-winning The Great Fire (2003) (a book I greatly treasure and honor). The diction, which ranges from stunted and halting to full, sophisticated and eloquent, provides an exact gauge for characters’ commitment or openness.

This review is running to excess. I would love to tackle main character Caro in more depth, but alas … Nevertheless, this book is another example of why I pick up books in the first place. It rewards, it impresses, it lets me live for a while with a strikingly brilliant writer and just … be taken along for the ride.

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"Tell Everyone I Said Hi" by Chad Simpson

 

From the University of Iowa Press comes another winner of the John Simmons Short Fiction Award; this time it’s Tell Everyone I Said Hi by Chad Simpson. For being a slim volume, it has a wide variety of effects, in a wide variety of lengths and treatment. Throughout, however, Mr. Simpson shows such insight into people’s mental states, in the oblique way people react to strife, and the way they seek company on their lonely journeys – even the snippets pack a wallop out of all proportion to their length.

The collection, in fact, leads off with Miracle, a mere seven paragraphs long, including one of one sentence. In it, a man responds to his addled brother’s phone call about an accident, and cannot keep from laughing, although at night, he dreams the worst. In a very few short, matter-of-fact sentences, Mr. Simpson sets the tone for this collection: harrowed, highly personal, thought-provoking, and even uplifting. In Potential an exceptional young athlete stares millions of dollars in the face, as he tries to get past his conflict about being the first overall draft choice and moving on to the next phase of his life. In this story, we get a glimpse of the closeness between the son and his father who never pressured him on the field of play. It is a touching, superb piece. Let x rises very nearly to poetry, even though its subject includes thoughtless deeds by junior high-schoolers, deeds which change two young lives.

In this collection, people work momentously to fend for themselves, usually because of some mistake or unavoidable tendency which drove loved ones off. There are two stories that reprise one set of characters. Eponymous Peloma is twelve years old in the first one, over six feet tall, orange-haired, and heavy. She and her dad try to muddle through respective challenges in the wake of the mother/wife’s fatal auto accident. Peloma tries half-heartedly a couple of times to kill herself, but her father, telling the stories in the first person, finds the path they can travel together. The first story leaves us on a cliffhanger, almost literally. The second story with these characters concludes the collection. In it, Dad chides himself when he hears of Peloma’s almost disastrous first day of driving at driver’s ed. He acknowledges that he should have given Peloma some practice behind the wheel, and so takes her out. The final sequence of their experience together in his pickup truck forms a lovely climax to this sometimes haunting collection. It’s worth the price of admission by itself.

This is a remarkable, distinctive collection, and proves what the folks in Iowa City know so well: short fiction is in exceedingly capable hands. Kudos once again on this selection for the prize!

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"Battleborn" by Claire Vaye Watkins

Stunningly clean and efficient, raw and cruel, this collection of short pieces announces the arresting arrival of Claire Vaye Watkins. Ms. Watkins mirrors the desolation of her suffering, addled denizens with the desolation of harsh, empty Great Basin Nevada. Replete with hardship, haunt, and worry, these stories nevertheless also impress us with the author’s already highly-developed skill with English that cuts directly to the meat of the matter.

The characters populating this collection are indeed born of battle, and for many, life presents the overwhelming sense that they must continue to fight every day. In Ghosts, Cowboys, a young woman traces the effects of a curse that starts with the exploitation and death of prospectors for silver in Nevada, through the poverty and obscurity of a movie-set ranch operator, to the early depredations of the Manson family. The battle has only started for the two teenage girls out for kicks in Rondine Al Nido.  It ends in painful loss and gradual estrangement, all with such inevitability. The perhaps ironic title may refer to the lost bond of love between the two girls. In Past Perfect, Past Continuous, Simple Past, an unfortunate young Italian man vacationing in Las Vegas suffers first through the loss of his friend in the desert, and then through the disillusionment of frustrated infatuation with a prostitute. Its wrenching climax crystallizes the man’s pain.

Wish You Were Here features another young woman dealing with an unnamed and bottomless emptiness, which surfaces in her inability ever to hear her infant crying. This woman has no wish to live by the too-restrictive dictates of her husband, and repels the married man with whom they are camping when she tries to proposition him. Man o War contains memorable characters in the retired miner and the young girl he finds unconscious in the desert. It also contains some of the bleakest and most comprehensive descriptions of the (un)natural desert. How about the fictional trope used here, wherein the 67-year-old quasi-hermit shoots off fireworks scavenged from the desert floor, his jaded and manipulative teenage damsel by his side? One of the best in the book. 

Ms. Watkins’s apparently effortless shift to a 19^th-century style in The Diggings is impressive, as is the story itself. It tells of the desperation, physical as well as emotional, suffered by the color-struck prospectors of 1849 California. Racial prejudice, greed, and insanity all receive full treatment, and the result is a history lesson for anyone interested in the California Gold Rush.

Some stories repeat themes and characters, but this is a quibble. When the treatment is so real, and the problems cut to the bone the way they do, they deserve multiple treatments. I was stunned by the language and transported by the experiences here. This volume is well worth it.

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"Sacred Hearts" by Sarah Dunant

Take up Sacred Hearts by Sarah Dunant, and enter a convent in medieval Ferrara, and follow the lives of nuns who strive to be next to Jesus, hoping for inspiration, or better yet, to be transported completely out of themselves in spiritual ecstasy. In this full, memorable tale, they also grapple with each other in the more worldly arena of deceit, rebellion, and betrayal.

Yes, this is a microcosm, brilliantly realized by Ms. Dunant. As in her other novels of that milieu, The Birth of Venus and In the Company of the Courtesan, she renders the lives of women in Renaissance Italy in high relief. I have read Venus and as good as it is, this is rather superior. For me, the characters are fuller, the plot more suspenseful, and the stakes just as high. The Santa Caterina convent in Ferrara and 1567 AD, form our setting. A convent enjoying perhaps its twilight of privilege, the nuns there still entertain the nobility with theatrical productions, and they have a deservedly high reputation for their choir. The choir director even composes music for the Psalms and other sacred texts. But the Protestant Reformation looms ever larger in the background, with its constant push for purer devotion, less ostentation, and removal of the Church – especially its convents – from the earthly realm. 

Enter Serafina, a sweet-voiced young novice whose father forces her into Santa Caterina against her will. Her background includes a forbidden flirtation, and she panics at the incarceration, as she views it, and creates a large disturbance. Suora (sister) Zuana, the convent’s dispensary sister (healer), inherits the responsibility of trying to orient the young rebel to her new life. It doesn’t work very well. The captivating, exceptional story that follows embroils us in the power struggle within the convent walls. On one side the abbess would maintain the freedoms and privileges so many other establishments are losing. She is threatened by the nun in charge of training the novices, who would focus the world on the glorious transports of a holy ascetic sister, who inspires the rest of the community with her pious zeal. Young Serafina catalyzes the conflict, and remains the focus of Zuana, whose point of view serves as the novel’s center.

The characters and events of this novel will stay with you. Ms. Dunant’s pacing is superb, and the story’s events flow as though inevitable. There are surprises, and shocks, and enough intrigue to delight any lover of internecine conflict. As odd as that sounds. 

I recommend this book to anyone interested in noblewomen in Renaissance Italy, in the practice of convent dowries, or in Reformation politics. But most of all I recommend this book for its spot-on observations of human nature in duress, for its lovely description of devotional chorale work, and for its lively, full description of an insular place at a remote time. For the first time in a long time, I find myself stumbling over all the thoughts I want to express about this shining story. Take it up and enjoy it.

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"The Book of Madness and Cures" by Regina O'Melveny

In The Book of Madness and Cures, Regina O’Melveny takes us on a wide-ranging circuit of emotion and redemption, and we get a tour of the known world into the bargain. Set in 1590, this splendid debut novel follows the travels of young Gabriella Mondini from her native Venice all the way to Scotland, and thence to Morocco, all in search of her absented father, who is a doctor. This will reward the fortunate reader, who will learn how medieval physicians viewed illness and fevers, but more importantly, will get to follow Gabriella’s quest, where she encounters love, death, security, and life-threatening danger. Gabriella’s quest is important because it tempers her, it leads her to accept a final end to her wanderings, and affords her a closure she barely dreamed of at its outset.

Signorina Gabriella is actually Dottoressa Mondini, an insightful and compassionate physician in her own right, but the medical guild of her Venice home drums her out – women are not allowed to practice. If this were not enough, Gabriella hasn’t received a letter from her itinerant father for months, and she doesn’t know how long it took the last one to reach her. She sets out, bringing two beloved servants with her, and makes a daunting, almost heroic trip across Europe, with stops in northern Italy, southern France, Germany, the Netherlands, and Scotland. At every stop, she meets doctors who knew her father, and they relate an ever-worsening picture. Increasingly, they think him unhinged, and she must play dogged detective until she finds herself in a small desert settlement in Morocco. I found the payoff here quite satisfying.

This denouement has everything: bewilderment and heartache, as well as acceptance, affirmation, and the promise of a full, rewarding life. This debut work promises brightly for its author, for the effects of fine fiction are here: deep and real characters, a plot framework that builds our interest and holds our sympathy. Ms. O’Melveny completes fiction’s oldest, and I consider most difficult tasks: she captures our hearts’ sympathy, and our minds’ discernment, with her wonderful first-person heroine. Lesser characters are also fully nuanced and believable, although not always so sympathetic.

The Book of Madness and Cures ultimately contains the story of Gabriella’s own “madness,” her questing, striving heart. Take this book up, for I know you will be as pleased as I was at the balm contained in it for us all.  

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