“The Book of Chameleons” by José Eduardo Agualusa

We experience “The Book of Chameleons” as though watching a slide show. In brief, concise chapters, these lost, searching souls grapple with painful pasts and threatening presents. One measure of José Eduardo Agualusa’s artistry and effectiveness: we certainly don’t mind that it’s narrated by a man who had returned to life as a gecko – for substantial parts of the narrative, we barely notice. Who better to tell the story of these human chameleons? As Angola struggles to emerge from decades of ruinous conflict, its citizens value nothing as highly as blending in.

Félix Ventura, an albino living in the Angolan capital of Luanda, dispenses palatable pasts to clients with something to hide, or to forget. One client takes his services, which consist of a couple of documents and a decades-old news clipping, extremely seriously. He travels to Cape Town and New York to track down his new mother, who is a highly appealing fiction. Another character, who does not seek Félix’s services, wears a ratty old red t-shirt from the Soviet Union that apparently cannot be removed. He lives in a sewer; alone among these characters, this madman longs for the past. Along the way, we and Félix meet Angelica Lucia – the angel of light – who along with Félix counterbalances the dark and disturbing forces at play.

Sr. Agualusa approaches his subject matter in such a novel way! Eulalio, so the narrating gecko is named, merges the functions of dreams and reality, throwing all of consciousness into a turmoil where meanings come and go, where interpretation rules and perception cannot be trusted. So this spare little piece, so superbly translated by Daniel Hahn, with its slivers of chapters and arresting images, bears its impressive freight of regret, yearning, hatred, bloodshed, and redemption so lightly, so effortlessly … I begin to wax on about Sr. Agualusa, and he certainly deserves the accolades he has received. Take up this highly diverting piece and let yourself be carried away, by all means! I highly recommend it.

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"Mr. Toppit" by Charles Elton

In an exceedingly funny debut, Charles Elton hoists modern fame-hungry society on its petard of greed, ego, and hypocrisy. “Mr. Toppit” features oddballs and prickly characters galore, and the strife between and within these denizens lurks never very far from the surface and frequently boils over. Almost never have I laughed out loud so often reading a book.

A Modesto, California, woman takes a vacation in London in the early days of Reagan and Thatcher. It’s somewhat out of character for her … she’s pretty much a homebody, heavily involved in volunteer work, and is taking her initial trip without her friend from work. Chance puts her on the scene of the accidental death of an obscure author of children’s books, who says a few fateful dying words to her, and the rest, as they say, is history. Laurie, the citizen of Modesto, gloms on to the poor man’s family and his nearly unknown books, and through a series of – maybe serendipitous – circumstances, the books become overwhelmingly popular. With popularity comes wealth of course, but for whom? It also brings lack of privacy, as everyone in the family finds out to their chagrin.

All this is told from the point of view of Luke, the author’s son, for whom the main character in the books is named. Luke ages from a very believable twelve to a very believable mid-20s. Although a handful of voices propel the narrative, it all comes through Luke’s filter. Our eponymous Mr. Toppit is the almost-never-seen villain in the series of books written by the deceased author, and commands fear and revulsion from his lair – over the books and over this book. His presence comes through in the way these people mistreat each other, grab at fame and fortune, and generally make oh-so-modern asses of themselves. Lest we lose focus, Luke, our nearly imperturbable narrator, presents all from his bemused and put-upon perspective. This is exceedingly funny stuff, remember. It skewers our modern TV-and-trappings mores beautifully, unerringly. It indicts us through its very accuracy.

I always assume it’s my fault, but I became a little confused about certain characters’ chronology at the end. But never mind that. If you want to read a marvelously-voiced, wickedly accurate reflection of our modern A.D.D.-addled society, pick this up.

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"The Abacus and the Cross" by Nancy Marie Brown

It’s impossible to say to what extent fear of the Apocalypse gripped medieval Europe as the calendar crept toward the year 1000 AD, but there were churchmen and self-promoters willing to preach terror and penitence to the gullible masses. Gerbert d’Aurillac, monk from southeastern France, later canon, archbishop and pope, was clearly not one of these.

In “The Abacus and the Cross” we learn of the public progress of Gerbert, the great scholar and tutor and adviser to emperors. The most sought-after schoolmaster of his day, he headed the cathedral school at Reims, the most important church in France, from 972 to 989. He rose to the top at a time when kings and emperors sought to ornament their courts with learned men of science and with as many books as could be assembled. What we think we know of tenth-century Europe is largely just wrong. Muslims occupying the Iberian Peninsula had established Cordoba, the continent’s greatest city, with its largest library, from which it freely spread the most advanced mathematics and science knowledge of the age. In 2001, scholars uncovered an actual abacus board attributed to Gerbert, and it contains all the Arabic numerals and their equivalent Roman numerals. The abacus’s construction and use, and the use of Arabic numerals, Gerbert learned from Muslims while in Spain. Thus can historians trace and credit the introduction to Europe of Arabic counting to Gerbert, the philosopher-pope. What other enlightening things can we take away from this wonderful, engaging book?

Author Nancy Marie Brown teaches us many lessons that apply equally today as they did a thousand years ago: in politics, trust no one; be temperate in speech and writing, because you never know when you might need to turn to someone for help; you can’t do anything about your legacy once you’re gone. Gerbert had big, big dreams for the Holy Roman Empire of the time, but he and his emperor friend, Otto III, died before they could be realized. What the Saracens and Europeans then perpetrated against each other forms the great tragedy of this story.

This highly readable book brims over with eye-opening anecdotes, focusing on the story of Gerbert, never more in his element nor happy as when pursuing his scientific studies. Here the scholarly and scientific issues of the time come alive; they live and breathe in Ms. Brown’s deft and comfortable treatment. No dry tome, this. Pick it up and enjoy it, and peer into a far-off realm and time. Highly recommended.

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"All is Forgotten, Nothing is Lost" by Lan Samantha Chang

As I progressed through “All is Forgotten, Nothing is Lost,” I felt the hand of a careful artist, demanding the highest performance of her lean language, and observed her continued bountiful success in meeting that demand. Lan Samantha Chang has given us a deep, arresting, memorable piece, whose characters stay with us long after their story ends.

Young Roman Morris strives to write poetry and succeeds brilliantly – he wins an early fellowship and later in life, the Pulitzer Prize for his deep, unique, heartfelt verse. He lives a life in academia, and it’s a cushy life, except that something gnaws at him: he thinks his onetime mentor and lover Miranda, herself a brilliant poet of personal observation, may have exercised nepotism in vaulting him into his early recognition and success. Roman has doubts about himself as a result. He wonders whether he deserves his accolades and treats those who love him with a hard-to-forgive combination of coldness and mistrust.

We understand Roman’s inability to level with any of those around him, although we may think ill of him for it. The characters he abuses deserve better, particularly Miranda and later, his wife Lucy, who both suffer at his hands, but in rather different ways. But Bernard, the friend and shadow-character, plays perhaps the most intriguing function in the story. As Roman’s foil, he sometimes represents the Path Not Taken, for Bernard is another gifted poet who has worked on a long piece all his adult life, with no outward success. Bernard lives a far more virtuous life, Roman sees to his chagrin, and perhaps stands as the conscience Roman has never paid much attention to. This all comes to a head at the unhappy end of a long visit Bernard pays Roman and Lucy. Roman feels threatened because he didn’t realize Bernard had such impressive gifts – he even suspects Lucy and Bernard of misbehavior behind his back, and sends Bernard away. I find myself considering Bernard more and more; he’s a fine construct – he balances Roman’s baser side, and proves in the end to be a weak force (his lungs are ruined from second-hand smoke) that Roman will miss keenly after he’s gone.

How fitting that a story about brilliant writing should come to us in such brilliant language! Ms. Chang’s tightly- harnessed prose never gets in the way, and yet answers our need to see inside these characters. Graceful, rhythmic, restrained, instructive – Ms. Chang’s prose is all these. And the depth! I caught echoes of Henry James in passages describing the relationships between and among these striving, stricken souls. But, fear not, there are none of the fussy, nested phrases of the late James here. All is in wonderful, flowing order. Our author renders psychological insights and memorable stories in classy, disciplined prose, with characters portrayed truly and unblinkingly – this is a fine achievement.

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"The Dissemblers" by Liza Campbell

In “The Dissemblers” Liza Campbell offers a close portrait of young aspiring artist without a rudder and apparently without a compass. Ivy Wilkes, the first-person protagonist, wonders continuously about the meaning of her life, the direction it apparently isn’t taking, what mark she might leave on the world. Her friendship with Maya and the two Valdez cousins gets in the way of these potential achievements, especially when, after precious little soul-searching, she agrees to go along with an illegal money-making scheme Maya proposes.

The scheme makes use of Ivy’s artistic talent, and makes her regret her loss of innocence and her pure ambition. In fact, Ms. Campbell portrays in Ivy a shallow, vain, self-absorbed, and naïve young woman who by her own admission vacillates between arrogance and desperate inadequacy. She wants to be loved and admired, but has received very little training in how to give love or admiration to anyone else. In every particular part of her life, she makes a major mistake, fouling up each opportunity to play it straight. In every particular, she dissembles and takes the selfish way, just like all her “friends.”

“The Dissemblers” may not have attractive characters, but the writing certainly measures up. Characters’ motivations always ring true, and Ms. Campbell handles the New Mexico landscape and moods beautifully – her descriptions evoke New Mexico’s unique brand of emptiness very accurately. There could be no more appropriate setting for the dogged emptiness of Ivy’s soul. I say dogged emptiness, but the conclusion of the story includes Ivy’s first, tentative steps to resuming her passion for painting. But our author tempers even this quiet uptick in Ivy’s life: she realizes how easily she can lie to the authorities about the conspiracy.

Liza Campbell has produced an interesting study in flawed character and shady ambition. She paces the story perfectly as we follow Ivy’s anguished descent and subsequent rise. Again, the stark depictions of New Mexico’s broad-brush vacancy agree in tone and texture with the emptiness of the characters. Of all the things I admired about this novel, I rank this parallel as the topmost.

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"Percival's Planet" by Michael Byers

In “Percival’s Planet,” Michael Byers brings us the fictionalized story of the 1930 discovery of Pluto. This consists of several separate stories, really, only one of which centers on Clyde Tombaugh, the young man fresh off the Kansas farm who actually does the trick. Other narratives involve Boston Brahmins throwing their weight around, a young, beautiful, mentally ill woman, and questing after the impossible dream on all sides.

Percival Lowell set up an observatory compound on a mountaintop near Flagstaff, Arizona, late in the 19th century, for the express purpose of finding the trans-Neptunian planet he assumed must be there. The assumption was rational enough, given the revolutions of the outer planets, and led reputable astronomers like Lowell to invest in the search. Many prominent astronomers of the day began to consider it a fool’s errand, though, and to question the validity of the basic data. And when in February of 1930 Tombaugh finally finds “Planet X,” as it is codenamed, tiny Pluto is nowhere near the size it needs to be to explain the rotation effects. So after the fateful discovery, the scientists still aren’t sure what they have on their hands.

But finding Planet X is only one of the quests that urge the narrative forward. Young and deeply troubled, Mary Hempstead runs out on her ex-fighter fiancé to try to get away from demons. The fiancé eventually starts a cross-country trek to find her; Felix DuPrie, scion of massive wealth, finds fulfillment as an amateur paleontologist. The scientists and mathematicians at the observatory, Percival Lowell’s aged and intolerant widow, and of course Clyde Tombaugh himself, achieve or approach goals to varying degrees. This story contains a variety of outcomes for a variety of characters, but I don’t think I’ve spent enough time with all of them to get the overarching principle in them, if there is one.

Mr. Byers weaves the stories together with telling precision and truth. This is a grand adventure not only in cutting-edge science, but in human struggles as well. Again and again we see “how the other half lives” and how each side of the great wealth gulf stands toward the other. Mr. Byers had to tell this story on a grand scale: the exhausting search of outer space, the vertigous vistas of Arizona, the devastating stock market crash. The scale is grand, but the telling is spot-on, so readable that the pages whiz by with the speed of a hurtling planet.

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"Tinkers" by Paul Harding

Every book has its individualism. Every book has the chords that it plays, and its events, its moods, its peculiar light. “Tinkers” by Paul Harding has gray and black, done in chiaroscuro, contrasting hues that represent the universe and the deep insides of people’s souls. This remarkable, dense little book presents so many challenges in its brief pages – it’s like slicing into a geode of quartz and finding that the crystals lead to other mountain ranges, which you would have to shrink to go to, before returning to your normal size. I’m glad to quote Marilynne Robinson here, however obvious and inadequate it is: “‘Tinkers’ is truly remarkable.”

Instinct tells me that propounding the plot would do this book a disservice, but maybe we’ll let it take us to an appreciation. “Tinkers” consists of the story of father and son, each their own type of tinker. The father is the itinerant kind, who tries to make a living driving a cart with goods for sale around the countryside during the first quarter of the 20th century. The story also introduces his son, who approaches death’s door at the novel’s outset. The narrative features in stunning and clear language, the conflict that arises when individuals throw in together but are hopelessly, grandly, mismatched in their abilities to cope with life and the world. That, however, makes up but a small part of the energy and raison d’être of this book.

The salient outward event of the story comes when Howard, the older character, realizes his wife wants to institutionalize him because of his epilepsy, and he leaves her and his family one night during the dinner hour and never goes back. The following passage, illuminating his understanding that he has misread his wife’s taciturn ways, gives a glimpse at the depth of feeling Harding evokes, and the soaring language he puts in his tinker/poet’s mind. As he drives past his own house and his own family seated to dinner, never to return, we can hear him wail:

“God hear me weep because I let myself think all is well if I am fully stocked with both colors of shoeshine and beeswax for the wooden tables, sea sponge and steel wool for dirty dishes. God hear me weep as I fill out receipts for tin buckets and slip hooch into pockets for cash, and tell people about my whip-smart sons and beautiful daughters … because my wife’s silence is not the forbearance of decent, stern people who fear You; it is the quiet of outrage, of bitterness. It is the quiet of biding time. God forgive me. I am leaving.”

Such is the strength of Harding’s diction; page after page contains language powerful enough to startle us and make us pause, to make us pull out our notebooks and transcribe at length. Another I must share: on the day Howard’s mother takes his own failing father away into the care of others, “My mother opened the outside door and the light came in and carved every object in the kitchen into an ancient relic. I could not imagine what people had ever done with iron skillets or rolling pins.” In the interests of space, I will not relay any of the numerous other examples so chock-filling this book.

I will, however, observe that Mr. Harding includes a vein running through the story, consisting of a high-toned phenomenology embraced by Howard, by any measure the main character. Our first glimpse comes when Howard imagines what happens when his grand mal seizures hit. He perceives that a door opens, a door which in normal times is disguised as the natural world, and that needles of a constantly-flowing electricity find him and stick fast to him, cleaving him in the middle, holding and holding to something inside him. Howard wonders at the forces that find him at these moments. He thinks he sees death from a different vantage from ordinary humans; he is allowed glimpses of the cosmos other must die to see. Aside from this admittedly inadequate discussion, please let me assure any potential reader that this facet of the story is worth the price of admission itself, and raises the chicken-and-egg question: is Howard a poet because of his affliction, or is he blessed with these hard-won insights because of his poetic nature?

Father and son are both tinkers; the son collects antique clocks, fixes and maintains them in his business. We read a series of excerpts in the book, from an 18th-century guide to repairing clocks, which are tinged with the supernatural and philosophical. These are in fact, fitting additions to the off-the-charts language employed here. The story presents the universe as an impossibly complex machine, not unlike an antique clock. In the final flashback showing a healthy GW Crosby (the son tinker), the author guides us to the dark basement, with its numerous ticking clocks and its dark wallpaper. A solitary 40-watt wall lamp illuminates the workbench, and a grandchild is instructed to watch as GW hums and tinkers to no apparent effect. On rare occasions the tick-tocking of all the clocks would synchronize, only to diffuse again into a chaotic pattern. And then in this dark, apparently boring scene, our heroic author lets the child-guest watch the dust float in the light of the jeweler’s lamp and imagine “miniaturized ships exploring inner space: The giant is fixing the time machine.” Thus does Harding turn our space and time inside out, miniaturizing space travel and making a tinker’s basement into the center of the universe.

Time and perception blur as we grope our way along this unique trail. Like David Mitchell and Marilynne Robinson, Paul Harding once again reinforces why we read, why we look forward to the next experience of crackin' open a new one.

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"How to Survive a Natural Disaster" by Margaret Hawkins

“How to Survive a Natural Disaster” recounts the grim story of a family so dysfunctional it barely merits the name. Craig feels he was tricked into marrying Roxanne, a religious woman with a daughter from a previous marriage. She becomes pregnant but loses the baby early in her term. So desperate is she to make things work with Craig, she flies to Peru and adopts another baby girl. And it is this baby girl through whom the events and consequences play principally out.

Margaret Hawkins tells this story through first-person exposition, each main character taking its turn illuminating the story. Even the dog has part of the narrative. We watch as the “sun rises and sets” over the favored older daughter. We watch as neighbors and strangers assume the uncommunicative baby is “slow” as she continues her mute ways. The older girl’s grandmother lavishes gifts on her - April, the favorite. Through it all, the younger girl, May/Esmeralda, keeps her counsel. This utter lack of even a semblance of balance between the treatment of the two girls forces the narrative along, and gives this novel its dark energy. For Esmeralda doesn’t lack for intelligence or emotion. She has the resources, neglectfully made available by Craig, to right these wrongs.

In this piece silence fills the space left empty by all the noisome cant spoken and heard in our modern lives. The small, dark presence of May reminds us that loved ones have needs and desires not to be ignored or forgotten. This least little girl, the nearly forgotten child, owns an unseen energy that exacts a reckoning one grim day and changes everything. This brief story brims over with real humanity – all its needs, all its querulous claims, all its selfishness. The voices of the characters balance the author’s need for realistic speech and plot exposition, and this Ms. Hawkins handles superbly. Sometimes the fatuousness of the individuals hurts, as we wish they would just grow up and give of themselves a little. But this is impossible, given the family’s constitution. It’s left to a noble neighbor woman, neurotic and nearly agoraphobic, and maybe suffering from split personality disorder, to pick up the tatters of this sorry group, and help life go on.

Ms. Hawkins deserves high praise for this intrepid book. It is a dark story, but exceedingly true and unadorned. In fact, its lack of tidy, neat wrapup preserves it, and deserves our lasting admiration and gratitude. Memorable, thought-provoking, balanced, and faithful, it proves Ms. Hawkins's ability and we're all richer for her having told it.

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"All That Follows" by Jim Crace

Lennie Less is a saxophonist, a well-known jazz musician in the U.K. with lots of fans and lots of credits, who is apparently afraid of everything. Jim Crace presents this quirky, bumpy portrait as its hero lives through the very eventful week in which he turns 50. The narrative contains a highly individual, detailed, and sometimes trying progress to a nevertheless rewarding denouement.

The player in question is almost no player at all. He shies from everything. He has taken a sabbatical as our story opens, trying to deal with a bum shoulder that depresses him - makes him feel his age. His wife and stepdaughter have had a violent row and the stepaughter has moved out and severed contact. As a result, his dear wife has lost her sense of humor, her devotion to her husband has taken a back seat, and as Lennie waits and hopes for a renewed closeness, he watches the video news. His past impinges suddenly on his presentwhen Maxie Lermontov, a trouble-making radical Lennie once knew, perpetrates a hostage crisis. His past comes rushing back in, inconveniently, and he perversely cannot stay away from it, or tell his wife or the authorities the truth about it.

Mr. Crace constructs Lennie Less of not-very-stern stuff at the outset of his story. And the character's whining and prevarication wore me down a bit. I always returned, however, to take up the story, and now I'm very glad I did. The hero becomes more sensible and more admirable as the book progresses and his family, his admirers, even his legion of fans, grows as a result. Mr. Crace has clearly gained a fan in me. His hero's multi-faceted character reflects a mature, confident author, and an extreme talent at structuring a story. Pick up "All That Follows" and meet the author and his memorable creation.

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"Enchantress of Florence" by Salman Rushdie

My first foray into things Rushdie, and I came away excessively diverted. This is an Arabian Nights-type tale, with magic, enchanted emperors, and an exotic locale.

We have an Italian nobleman, Il Machio (who, I figured out embarrassingly late, is Niccolo Machiavelli), who travels to the Mughal Empire (in present-day India and Pakistan) and claims he is the Emperor's uncle. There turns out to be some possible justification for this improbable claim, and Il Machio enjoys favor in the court for a time. The eponymous Enchantress has the power to put entire cities in her thrall, which she does the capital, for most of the book; she can also come back from the dead.

A good part of this book's energy flows from this tension: men have temporal power over women in this world, but women have emotional power over men. For all its fabulous subject matter, this book is firmly planted in the ground of real human nature. The Emperor is given considerable intuitive powers, and is an enlightened ruler for the age, but eventually Il Machio's stars dim, and all his good fortune must turn.

I enjoyed this book thoroughly - I didn't know what to expect from Rushdie. What I got was highly imaginative and picked me up and carried me away. Recommended.

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