"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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"Summer of the Dancing Bear" by Bianca Lakoseljac

A past world is revealed to us in Bianca Lakoseljac’s lyrical Summer of the Dancing Bear, a world in which gypsy lore and culture play prominent roles. The author makes the discovery of this world deeply rewarding by using a risky gambit in portraying her heroine’s consciousness.

A girl struggles to come of age in this haunting story set in Tito’s Yugoslavia in the 1960s, and the struggles arise because of the girl’s unusual abilities. She perceives her idyllic country surroundings unusually deeply for one so young: the harvest-ready wheat fields glow and swirl as though rendered by Van Gogh – her grandmother took her to the museum to see the exhibit – and her dreams reveal events and calamities she could not know of otherwise. Her grandmother is friendly with the gypsies when they pass through, and they respect her as a shaman. Her grandmother also sees the abilities of young Kata, and raises her with loving attention. 

The gypsies play a central role here, first by bringing a bear to perform at the village in the summer of Kata’s eighth year. This vividly-told event sets off the narrative’s tragic spiral. A village woman’s baby disappears, and the gypsies are naturally blamed. Kata, in the midst of an idyllic childhood, plays a role in the events at a climactic event in which her abilities finally become apparent.

Ms. Lakoseljac sets herself a very difficult path: she portrays Kata’s consciousness as a confused and dream-infused vision. Thoughts and images come to her suddenly – sometimes she has been dreaming, and sometimes she finds herself in a remote spot near a marsh or woodland with no idea how she got there. Sometimes it affects her health, and her loved ones and neighbors become alarmed for her. The author always fills us in on the events that lead to the spell, and poor Kata must work through the significance of her visions. Readers will find themselves wishing they could help, because Kata is a very sympathetic character.

Regardless of Kata’s sudden and unpredictable visions, this book is tightly-plotted and rewarding. It honors the oppressed and wandering Romany tribes, effectively portraying their lust for life as well as their humanity and enlightened traditions. Kata learns the part she will play in the tradition, and the reader is treated to a captivating story set in a seeming far-off time and place. Highly recommended.

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"Back in the Game" by Charles Holdefer

Back in the Game packs a solid punch – it’s full of awkward and endearing humanity – with its straight-ahead style and character-driven plot. How some authors work so much believability and sympathy in a slim volume is completely beyond me. This book oddly shares an impressive heart, and a comfortable, reasonable approach to life that belies the desperation of some of its characters.

Stanley Mercer, a former pro ballplayer, has come home to America from France, where he was trying unsuccessfully to find funding for a barnstorming baseball tour. His influential brother secures him a teaching job at an elementary school in Iowa, and Stanley finds himself trying to make sense of it all. He scarcely believes it. Not one to dwell too much dashed dreams, he discharges his new responsibilities reasonably well, making a pretty good teacher for the year, particularly since he never quite got his bachelor’s degree.  He becomes involved with one or two families during the year, and one of them, the Rawlingses, is headed by Reggie, who is unfortunately a meth addict. As always, addicts are unpredictable while high, and Stanley has to deal with the raging Reggie, who may or may not know the extent of Stanley’s involvement with his wife, Amy.

Mr. Holdefer constructs his tale with his protagonist’s point of view once removed from the action that propels the story. His first-person narration captures for us the fairly routine events of the young teacher’s life, but the characters he encounters provide the drama and narrative energy. Through it all, we the lucky readers are treated to pitch-perfect portrayals of resilient small-town Iowans. As Stanley makes his way, the meth plague rears its ugly head, and the large local hog operation sustains an emergency hazardous spill. Events, never under Stanley’s control to begin with, spiral even further outside his ambit: his supposed girlfriend, half a day away in Chicago, may or may not have plans that include him. The local woman he dallies with turns out to be an adversary as events unfold, largely because her daughter is in Stanley’s class, and her husband is the meth addict.

I recommend this book to readers of literate fiction for its unique structure, for its finely-observed humanity, and for its big heart.

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"Dire Salvation" by Charles B. Neff

In Dire Salvation Charles B. Neff uses straightforward, punchy language to unroll a suspenseful yarn of drugs, mental illness, and revenge in central Washington state. In it, he succeeds in gaining our sympathies for his characters, and helps us see, and root for, every shape that salvation may take for them.  It’s a genuine pleasure to read this direct, businesslike book, not only because of the economy of language, but also because of a balancing richness of theme and image.

In small-town rural Washington, a drug mule is murdered, and weak-witted, defenseless Lonny Ogden is held for it. A number of inconsistencies undermine his status as a suspect, and when a second member of the drug underground is killed with Lonny still in custody, focus necessarily shifts in another direction. Lonny and his big sister Calla, who is the story’s fretful protagonist, are part Native American. The inconsistencies and conflicts between the Native and Anglo cultures show, somewhat under the surface, but don’t really break out into the open here except as an alternate approach to the moral principles involved. The other characters, town mayor Phil Bianchi, immigrant policeman Greg Takarchuk, and reformed drug dealer Jason Ferris, all struggle to pick their way through treacherous waters to promising new lives. These subplots provide the gratifying depth that this novel rewards the reader with.

Mr. Neff makes highly effective use of native stories and legends, wielding them to fill the depths of his characters, and make genuine their motivation. They provide a backdrop to current nefarious or virtuous activity, and knowing them gives a character a key to solving the main riddle, and to getting Lonny off the hook. This book is paced brilliantly – characters’ self-examination, when it happens, happens with the same economy as the main action. It’s all handled very deftly indeed. The suspenseful principal story serves as entrée and engine for the personal quests of its main characters. It’s a pleasing, impressive whole, and features an action-packed, perilous climax that is highly satisfying.

On the whole, a highly recommended read.

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"A Small Fortune" by Rosie Dastgir

Alia, a young woman born of a British mother and a Pakistani father, works hard during the events of A Small Fortune to mend her fractured relationship with her father. Indeed, that relationship is one of the principal axes around which the events in this funny and touching debut novel revolve. The story captures the friction generated by other conflicts as well: that of cultures when immigrants try to adjust to a new land, that of the zealous-but-cowardly trying to get the too-trusting to do their radical and destructive bidding.

This is the story of Harris (the Anglicized name of a Pakistani man who has immigrated to London), and his extended family. Harris has survived a toxic marriage (alluded to in the novel, but not part of its events) and reaped a tidy sum in settlement. As a devout Muslim, he seeks a way to unburden himself of the funds, and help his family and loved ones in the process. He unwisely settles the entire amount (more than ₤50,000) on a sleazy cousin who spends a good part of it on flashy components and resents forever after any suggestion that he might pay some of it back. 

Harris is a sad sack throughout much of the book. Author Rosie Dastgir (a onetime Londoner of mixed British and Pakistani parentage) imbues him with a strong urge, but not quite the courage, to do right by his family and his faith. He shies away from asking his cousin for a return of any of his funds. He shies away from his own beloved daughter because she lives like a modern Londoner, which is clearly what she is, instead of a chaste young Muslim woman. His attempt to dictate his morality to Farrah, the charming widowed professor with whom he develops a relationship, at length estranges the two.  I had a hard time crediting this sort of behavior in 21^st Century London, but I must thank Ms. Dastgir for the humanity of this character, and for the forlorn humor involved in the portrayal. 

That’s where this book is really strong: the author gives each and every character a full human shading and nuance, from the main players to the ones we only get a glimpse of. Harris’s young nephew Rashid goes through a gratifying (from the reader’s standpoint) crisis and redemption, but my hopes for a clearer settling-up of accounts elsewhere came to nothing: the sleaze-bag cousin gets himself elected to the town council and remains impervious to entreaties that he do anything honorable about his windfall. Much of this book relies on a series of willful misunderstanding and intransigence that distances characters from those closest to them. As I say, I found this the most trying area in which to suspend my disbelief.

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"In a Summer Season" by Elizabeth Taylor

The best gifts, they say, come in small packages. In a Summer Season seems a slight book for most of its length, but its subtle conflicts, frustrated hopes, and the internal journey of main character Kate’s heart – without warning these features take on a touching significance just at the end of the novel. Elizabeth Taylor (a different one) packs a powerful ending into this quiet book that one does not expect.

Kate and her family live in middle class comfort in Surrey, not too far from London, and the story takes place in the late 1950s. Kate had been widowed, but is remarried, to a man roughly ten years her junior. The bit of money they have between them allows a leisurely lifestyle: neither works, although Kate’s mother-in-law Edwina is forever trying to set up Kate’s husband Dermot in some kind of career.  This push leads to the story’s main conflict; Dermot starts an apparently benign deception that nevertheless is a key factor in the wrenching events at novel’s end.

Ms. Taylor tells this story quietly: Kate’s frustrations are relieved rather promptly in most cases; her twenty-two-year-old son advances in the family business; her daughter gets over a crush on the curate. But the theme of the unity of this family emerges, and it seems to me that Dermot, and Araminta, the young siren of the neighborhood, are simply distractions, dazzling, diverting in their way, but only that. Dermot makes Kate happy, but the slow erosion of his confidence and self-esteem build up brilliantly to his ultimate failure. It’s a difficult, shadowy thing to see coming; Ms. Taylor does such a masterful job of surprising us with the climactic events.

In a Summer Season shows us our weaknesses, and shows how capricious our ideas of happiness are. We feel forces here that are quite beyond our control, and our emotional negligence contributes massively to our lack of control. This novel, gentle and lulling throughout its main course, surprises us with its sense of inevitability at the end, and teaches us to look with fresh eyes and appreciate our loved ones and our blessings, with hearts more open. It is a valiant, worthwhile effort.

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"The Air We Breathe" by Andrea Barrett

Tuberculosis patients are transported to an Adirondack sanatorium for their rest-cure in the days just before World War I, and in Andrea Barrett’s excellent The Air We Breathe provide a microcosm for the world on the eve of losing its innocence in the “War to End All Wars.” There are many novels which show an author’s deep understanding of human nature, and The Air We Breathe belongs in the ranks of the very finest. 

Leo Marburg, a young Russian immigrant without family or cultural ties, contracts the dread consumption while living and working in Brooklyn in the spring of 1917. His arrival at Tamarack State, the institution for tuberculosis patients, precipitates at length a series of misunderstandings, and attracts the suspicion of the self-appointed authorities. His fellow inmates also succumb to unfounded suspicion, and turn on him. At novel’s end, they realize how unfair they were to their former friend, and how unjust.

Ms. Barrett does a marvelous job of bringing in the remarkable historical events at that epochal moment. The inmates, suffering from boredom and a sense of abandonment, begin, grudgingly at first, to gather once a week to hear a talk by one of their own. Late in the book, after all the reproach and recrimination have played their havoc on the principals, particularly Leo, the group reflects on a time of lost innocence (a grand job of the author to catch the tenor and momentousness of the time):

 How innocent we seem to ourselves, now, when we look back at our first Wednesday afternoons! Gathering to learn about fossils, poison gas, the communal settlement at Ovid, about Stravinsky and Chekhov, trade unions and moving pictures and the relative nature of time, when we could have learned what we needed about the world and war simply by observing our own actions and desires. We lived as if nothing was important.

In awe of events swirling beyond their walls, the inmates make the mistake of missing the feelings and personal strife right within their midst. They have witnessed thwarted love, betrayal, xenophobia, wartime jingoism, and the disillusionment of talented immigrants. The clever author accomplishes two tricks at once here: she uses the folly and selfishness of the patients to illuminate the faults of the outside world (there is a fire that generates poison gas and fatally injures three), and also shows in stark relief the truth that the less we care for our fellow beings, the less we are worth. She offers here a lesson for the world at large, and also for much smaller communities.  This is superbly thought-provoking, plainly told, and deceptively straightforward. Find the depth through the archetypes. Recommended, big-time.

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