Fiction – Finding My Wings

RELEASE DAY REVIEW: If You Want to Make God Laugh

If You Want to Make God Laugh by Bianca Marais (Putnam) July 16, 2019
In 40 words or less: At the start of Mandela’s presidency, South Africa’s changes are seen through the lives of estranged white sisters and a black teenager. Living in a community wrestling with conflicts of old and new, the women confront secrets that define them.
Genre: Fiction
Locale: South Africa
Time: 1994
In her second novel, Bianca Marais once again uses a defining moment in South Africa’s history as the backdrop for her story.

If You Want to Make God Laugh is told in three voices – Ruth, a fading socialite; Delilah, Ruth’s sister who returns from decades as a nurse in the wild; and Zodwa, a teenage girl with dreams of educating herself to be a part of the New South Africa.

After the breakup of her marriage, Ruth returns to the family home to lick her wounds and figure her next move. Out of the blue her sister, Delilah, appears, having received a letter that a gunshot has left someone dear to her in very critical condition. Zodwa fails in ending an unexpected pregnancy, endangering her prospects for an education, and dashing the hopes of her mother who is herself facing serious health challenges.

Laugh is a novel of three women each taking charge of her own life within the realities of the “new” South Africa. In this novel, politics are less a player than the periodic conflicts the women face in dealing with those seeking to wrest back the power and prestige of the Apartheid days. This is also the period when AIDS became rampant in South Africa, with misinformation, superstition, and prejudices. Bigotry, denial, and a profound lack of medical resources and support for patients and families created a far larger crisis for a country undergoing political and social upheaval.

Bianca Marais is a wonderful storyteller, clearly distinguishing her characters and their voices. To help frame her stories, she paints a full picture of the setting so the reader can visualize the space or location without any sense of being bogged down with details.

As an early reader of both of Bianca Marais’s novels, I’ve had the opportunity to take them in, unencumbered by the opinions of others. Hum If You Don’t Know the Words (review here) sent me searching for more on the Soweto uprising. Even those generally well-informed, had little access at the time to on the ground reporting. “Seeing” the events through the eyes of the characters gives a different perspective on history.

For me, Laugh is a more universal story, colored by the historic changes in South Africa. It is a novel of finding oneself, creating family, and forgiveness. The issues Ruth, Delilah, and Zodwz face are also very contemporary – sexual abuse, militant white nationalism, the AIDS crisis, and women needing to reclaim their lives from trauma. In both books, Bianca’s love of the country of her birth shines through.

While each stands on its own, Hum definitely begat Laugh, with connections from one to the other. It is reassuring to see beloved characters return, if briefly, and know in fiction, as in life, there is influence from one generation to the next.

Following ‘The Underground Railroad’

The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead (Doubleday) 2016, (Random House Audio, Bahni Turpin – Narrator)
In 40 words or less: Cora’s self-sufficiency makes her an outcast among the slaves on the Georgia plantation. When Caesar, another slave, prevails on her to escape with him, Cora’s journey to find a free future and reclaim her past begins.
Genre: Literary fiction
Locale: Georgia and north
Time: Approximately 1840’s
Winner of both the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award, Colson Whitehead uses magical realism and time-shifting to supplement the realistic and inhumane treatment of so many. Juxtaposing the attitudes of the slaveholders and those that maintained the railroad is fascinating. The villainy of the slave-catchers and the complacency of those standing by paints a portrait of the pre-Civil War US.

It took me far too long to make Colson Whitehead’s The Underground Railroad my own. Two years ago, Whitehead spoke at the BookExpo America Book & Author Breakfast, attended by the book trade, librarians, and bloggers or book group leaders like me. He is a charismatic speaker and it was clear that this book would make waves.

Several times a year, Dan and I head out on an extended road trip. This July’s was the most ambitious. We headed from the Washington, DC area to Hilton Head, SC, via Pennsylvania, Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama, and Georgia. It seemed fitting to choose The Underground Railroad as our audiobook since the characters Whitehead created traversed much of the same terrain.

Cora, the central character of the novel, is young and alone after her mother escapes the Georgia plantation and is never heard from again. All she is left by her mother is a tiny patch of land in front of their shack where Cora plants yams, supplementing her food supply and marking her independence. Cora is deeply hurt and angry that her mother has neither sent for her nor been in touch, though she clearly wasn’t captured and returned as a runaway. Very smart, Cora knows how to read and hides this knowledge since it could endanger her. She has only one friend and rebuffs efforts advances by any man, understanding that she is safer on her own.

Caesar, another slave on the plantation, has observed Cora and recognizes that her self-sufficiency and intellect would make his chance of escaping the plantation more likely. After several efforts, the two of them take off, heading to the underground railroad. Whitehead’s railroad is the literal conveyance that often comes to mind among those that are just learning about the period. There is a network of conductors, secretly assisting runaways on their journeys.

As Cora and Caesar travel from state to state, Whitehead creates different milieus that challenge their move to freedom. In each locale, the response of the residents to those seeking freedom is completely different as well. Whitehead’s descriptions draw the reader in and convey the terrifying situations that interactions with the residents and the terrain demand.

As I mentioned at the top, this was the audiobook we listened to as we made a big loop through many states that were on the real Underground Railroad. Looking out the window as the story unfolded, I gave more thought to the difficulty in traversing rivers, often with slave-catchers in pursuit and few swimming skills. I imagined the darkness and the dangers from run-ins with animals, trying to forage for food, and wondering if the one farm nearby was shelter or danger. The narrator, Bahni Turpin, gave distinctive voices to all the characters and created a picture that made the hours seem like minutes. While I should have moved this great novel to the top of the pile much sooner, I am grateful I waited. The combination of the book and the journey made this an experience I won’t soon forget.

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Escape to ‘Manhattan Beach’

Manhattan Beach by Jennifer Egan (Scribner) 2017
In 40 words or less: Eddie Kerrigan could do no wrong in his daughter Anna’s eyes. After he disappears, she helps support her family during WWII at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, pushing the limits of “women’s work.” Anna never stops wondering what happened to her father.
Genre: Literary fiction
Locale: New York
Time: 1930’s and 40’s
Jennifer Egan has a new twist on the Rosie the Riveter story, set in a working-class neighborhood in New York. From page one, Anna is smart and strong-willed, equally devoted to her family and her personal success.

The Depression has seen a reversal in the Kerrigan family fortunes. While Eddie loves his wife and both daughters, his wife Agnes has to devote almost all her attention to Lydia, disabled from birth and homebound. Agnes left a dancing career to raise her family, only retaining her exquisite costuming skills to help in its support. In Anna, Eddie sees a buddy, ready to accompany him on his rounds, and keep his secrets when needed. Financial pressures and the stresses of living in close quarters draw Eddie away from home, often with little explanation. One day he just doesn’t return.

Almost a decade later Anna secures a technical job at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, ensuring that precision parts meet specifications. Her off-hours are focused on her mother and her sister, whose physical needs are becoming more taxing. Anna makes the acquaintance of another worker who draws her into a life of nightclubs and men who are living on the edges of legality. Anna meets the nightclub owner, a man she met as a child on a visit with her father and gives him a false name, one of several secrets in her new life.

The tedium and low pay of the jobs reserved for women send Anna in search of alternatives at the Navy Yard. The most difficult position is that of a diver, working on the hulls of ships and performing repairs in total darkness underwater wearing hundreds of pounds of equipment. Against many odds, Anna is given a chance to compete for a spot.

Jennifer Egan has the knack for storytelling and enriching it with the little details that take a novel to the next level. For lovers of New York, there is the flavor of New York life, it’s neighborhoods and social fabric. If the role of women in the war effort is your thing, it’s there in spades. And then there is organized crime, the black market, and its prominent place in the entertainment business of the era. If told on its own, the family story of the Kerrigans would be compelling. Egan doesn’t play it for pathos, rather as cards the family has been dealt. This novel has all the attributes that the individual reader or book club seeks out – conflict, fully developed characters, and a setting that supports the plot in all its details. Manhattan Beach is consistent with the high-level writing people expect from Jennifer Egan.

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The Last Watchman of Old Cairo

The Last Watchman of Old Cairo by Michael David Lukas (Spiegel and Grau) March 2018
In 40 words or less: Mixing historical figures with a centuries-long fictional story, Lukas brings to life the centuries-long intertwining of the Muslim and Jewish communities. In the modern thread, a graduate student heads to Cairo to learn more about the father he barely knew.
Genre: Historical fiction
Locale: Cairo, Egypt; Berkeley, CA; and England
Time: 11th/12th century to the end of the 20th century
The true story of centuries worth of documents discovered at the end of the 19th century is a centerpiece of the novel.

Until the middle of the 20th century, Jews and Muslims lived side by in Cairo as they had for almost a millennium. In the 1950’s, Egypt’s Jews were expelled, emigrating to Israel, France, and the United States. A Jewish girl and Muslim boy, childhood friends, were reunited briefly in Paris in 1973, separating again before they knew of her pregnancy. Their child, Joseph, was raised in the US, only visiting his Egyptian family during an occasional summer, and maintaining his ties with his father through stories his father would tell over the phone.

Joseph’s father was the last in the line of Al-Raqb men who had served as night watchmen at Ben Ezra synagogue for generations. While not of high status, this was a position of great trust. After his father’s death, Joseph received a box with a piece of paper in Arabic and Hebrew, suggesting that Joseph should travel to Cairo. Joseph takes a leave from his graduate studies to connect with his late father and the secret he wanted to share.

In the late 1890s, Scottish twin sister adventurers and amateur scholars, Agnes Smith Lewis and Margaret Dunlop Gibson, brought fragments of Hebrew texts to Rabbi Solomon Schechter, a researcher in England. An expedition was arranged for Schechter to evaluate and bring back material from the Geniza, the repository for Hebrew sacred writings that may be torn or otherwise discarded, in the Ben Ezra Synagogue. While Schechter was in Cairo, Agnes and Margaret paid a visit while en route to the Holy Land. They, too, were interested in acquiring documents. Michael David Lukas has made this on-site research project and interactions with prominent members of the Cairo Jewish and political communities a major storyline in the novel. Having previously read detailed accounts of this project, referenced by Lukas in notes about his research, this fact-based view into life in Cairo during this period is particularly intriguing.

Joseph’s visit with his family is not without some bumps. Culturally he is American through and through so there is the necessary adaptation to both pace and style. Additionally, Joseph is hesitant to reveal aspects of his life and plans to the family. Joseph is gay, and that plays a part, though doesn’t define the story.

When historical fiction is very successful it may entice the reader to explore periods or places in history that previously were unfamiliar. The Last Watchman of Old Cairo does this and much more. Joseph’s Cairo is not that of the Arab Spring. It speaks to a time shortly before, when the flavor of the city was still captured in families with centuries of history. And just as the last watchman has died off, so has the Old Cairo that was home to people of all the Abrahamic religions, living and working together.

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Nature, nurture or fate? ‘The Immortalists’

The Immortalists by Chloe Benjamin (G.P. Putnam’s Sons) January 2018; Penguin Audio, Maggie Hoffman – Narrator
In 40 words or less: Four young siblings, ages 9 – 13, seek out a fortune teller who predicts the date of each one’s death, unknown to the others. One by one, Benjamin reveals their lives, times, and choices, always with death at hand.
Genre: Literary fiction
Locale: Various, USA
Time: 1969 – 2010
Chloe Benjamin adeptly mixes iconic American locales with carefully selected elements of history and popular culture to tell a family story and ask the recurring question, “How would you live your life if you knew the number of your days?”

The Immortalists has haunted me for months. So appropriate for a novel created on the premise that knowledge, kept secret, may dictate the choices of one’s entire life.

Varya, Daniel, Klara, and Simon Gold are the children of Saul, a tailor, and Gertie, living on the Lower East Side in 1969. The children are second generation Jewish Americans, living in a community and world markedly different from their elders. Having heard rumors of a psychic, the four seek her out, and each is told the date of his/her death and that they must not share that information with anyone, ever.

One by one, Chloe Benjamin reveals each child’s path to adulthood. Though never discussed, this one afternoon is a burden that the four carry throughout their lives. In many ways, it is the secrets more than the information itself that color the relationships within the family and with those they touch.

It takes particular skill to craft a novel that balances the isolation and connection of a family from childhood. Chloe Benjamin uses carefully chose locales and time periods to reveal each personality and reflect the defining and oppressive nature of each person’s countdown clock.

In the news and in individual conversations, the devasting cost of keeping secrets is a common topic. As I turn over my continuing reaction to The Immortalists, I wonder how many choices in life are responses to secrets, overriding nature and nurture with fear.

This book is worthy of all the accolades it has received. I listened to the audiobook, and while I had small issues with the narrator’s voice choice for the mother, I was completely caught up from the first moment. It is the mark of a beautifully crafted novel when the reader wants to intervene in the lives of the characters. When the characters stay long after the final page, that’s a book that must be shared.

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