"The Thirteenth Tale" by Diane Setterfield

The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield (2006, 456 pages) is just a flat out wonderful book.   The announced theme of my blog is "21 century books about people who read books".  The Thirteenth Tale is the epitome of such a book.   The Thirteenth Tale takes us deeply into the minds of people who love books, old English Classics like Jane Eyre, The Woman in White, Wuthering Heights, Rebecca, and The Case Book of Sherlock Holmes.

The story begins in an old bookstore run by Margaret Lee and her father.   It is the kind of book store that may soon not exist anymore.  The store owner loves books and has passed this love along to his daughter.   The mother of Margaret is disengaged from daily life.   (The reason for this is revealed in due time).   The bookstore makes little or no profit.   The income of the family comes from the father's work as a rare book finder for wealthy collectors.   Some days only three or four customers come in the shop.   The time setting of the novel is not precisely specified (in fact in the study group questions in the back of the book we are asked to guess when it took place) but it is in a time before malls, before TV,  before cell phones.    It was a time when bookstore owners and employees loved books and did not have to answer to stock holders.  If asked to guess I would say in the 1920s (in England).

The story is told in the first person by Margaret. 

The Shop itself makes next to no money.   It is a place to write and receive letters..In the opinion of our bank manager it is an indulgence, one that my father's success entitles him to.  Yet in reality-my father's reality and mine; I don't pretend reality is the same for everyone-the shop is the very heart of the affair.  It is a repository of books, a place of safety for all the volumes, once so lovingly written, that at present no one seems to want to read...And it is a place to read.   A is for Austin, B for Bronte, C for Charles and D for Dickens.

Margaret is a writer.   A writer of biographies of only slightly known figures, people who live in the shadows of the famous and fade into "profound obscurity" upon their death.   One of her biographies very much impressed Vida Winter, a beloved author of many books and a woman greatly venerated.   She has given numerous interviews detailing her life, each of them totally different from the others.    One day Margaret gets a letter from Vida Winter (she is such a formidable person that, even though fictional, I cannot bring my self to just call her "Winter").   Margaret is requested to come to her house.   When she gets there Ms Winter tells her that she wants her to write the true story of her life.

What follows is a very compelling gothic tale of the life and family of Ms Winters.   The plot action was totally compelling and had numerous great surprise twists.   Some wonderful things happen and some heart breaking ones.
We see how the reading life manifests itself in some very diverse (but also very similar) people.   Ms Winters has constructed her self into an iconic character through the internalizing of old books.   She is hiding a terrible secret, maybe we will learn it maybe we will not.   Margaret's father has used his love of books to make a living and to create a sanctuary to retreat from a troubled marriage with its own tragic story.  Margaret loves books totally.   She recasts the things she sees as if they were events in Jane Eyre.   (This aspect of the reading life is also displayed in Some Prefer Nettles by Junichiro Tanizaki and in his Arrowroot).  Margaret does not worry too much about her personal life as she knows as long as she has her books she will be ok.   Charles, an older quite well of man, plays a large role in the plot though he is not center stage very much.   Life has not gone his way.   He completely retreats into his library living in his books.  He is so caught up in The Reading Life that he more or less emerges from the library once every few months to sign some checks to keep his family going but he probably has not bathed in this period.  

The Thirteenth Tale shows a deep love of books and The Reading Life.    It is beautifully written.   The characters in the book were very real for me and I cared about each of them.   Margaret's father gave his daughter a great love of reading and a love for books.   She grew up as a reader.   The story line is just so much fun and so clever.   The Thirteenth Tale made me want to reread some books I read long ago, Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights and read Rebecca and The Woman in White for the first time.   The Thirteenth Tale is a work of subtle and exquisite intelligence by a great story teller.    As I finished this book I had a vision of The Bronte Sisters eagerly pressing The Thirteenth Tale into the hands of Wilke Collins who will advise Arthur Conan Doyle that he has found a mystery that would challenge Sherlock Holmes.   The book does have some darker elements and it requires your attention as there are a lot of twists and turns in the plot.  

I endorse this book without any reservations at all.   It is Ms Setterfield's first novel.   I hope there are many more.  

Claire of Kiss a Cloud has a very insightful post on the book



Q and A with Ms Setterfield

"The Almost Moon" by Alice Sebold

The Almost Moon is Alice Sebold's second novel (2007, 319 pages).    I read her first novel Lovely Bones in early July 2009, just before I began my blog.   Like almost everyone, I really liked Lovely Bones, her first novel.   I thought the point of view from which the story is told was very creative, the characters were well done and I was kept very interested by the story line.  I look forward to the movie.

Recently in a local book store I saw a huge stack of her second novel, Almost Moon on sale at 80 percent off the cover prize.   I like to follow an author if I like their first novel so I bought it and now have read it.

When the opening sentence of a novel is

When it was all said and done, killing my mother came easily

you pretty much know the book will not be a laugh riot and this for sure was not.

Almost Moon is the story of 24 hours in the life of Helen Knightly.   The first few hours center on her daily life taking care of her elderly mother, who she has always hated since a child.  She begins to ruminate on her childhood.   Here is a memory of Christmas past

Hanging above me were the clear-glass globes that took on the cast of separate worlds.   I imagined a mother and daughter in each of them.  In one, the mother and daughter would be sharing an old fashioned sled as they slid down a deep downy bank of snow.   In another, they drink hot cider and told each other stories in front of a fire.   In the final globe, the daughter held her mother's head beneath the surface of the icy water, strangling her as she drowned.

Helen is divorced and has grown children.   She is 49 and works as a nude artists' model at various art schools in her area.    Her father killed himself, her mother was as cold the ice water Helen imagined her drowning in.   Once the mother is dead, she realizes that she has to do something to cover it up.   She contacts her ex-husband, Jake, and he comes to the house to help her figure out what to do.    The body bears the marks of violence so they cannot simply say she died (the mother was 88).   The plot action is about half in Helen reflecting on the events in her raising that lead to this day and half on her and Jake's schemes for avoiding criminal charges.  (Jake knows he can be charged for not turning her in).   The police show up, Helen tries to be artful and cast suspicion on a neighbor.    There is some suspense generated by our curiosity about how it will all play out but not much.  

If this were my first Alice Sebold novel, I would not have read a second one.   The characters are without much interest.    Most goodread.com readers give it from one to two stars and some found it so boring and cliche ridden they could not finish it.    We do not like Helen and that is ok.  I do not have to like the protagonist of a novel to like the novel but I have to be able to find them interesting or believable.   Helen is neither.   Even the name for her husband, "Jake" seemed like a cliche out of a soap opera.   Everyone who takes care of an elderly parent can find it burdensome but many people reap great spiritual rewards from this.    Helen is a person devoid of interest, her husband who is supposed to be an artist of some fame is completely undeveloped as are her grown children.    I kind of had to push myself to finish this book and did begin to speed read when I was within 100 pages of the end.  I did want to find out how the story concludes.

I can endorse this book only to those like myself who enjoyed her first novel and want to follow her subsequent novels.   I do not endorse it to those whose reading time is limited and I do not endorse it to be read unless you want, as I do, to follow the development of a promising author.    For most people (and maybe for myself if I had not bought it!) I would say wait for her next novel and just skip Almost Moon.   It does do a pretty good job of showing the negative aspects of elder care and showing how the way we are treated as a child can shape our adulthood.    If you have a lot of reading time, you loved Lonely Bones and have a high tolerance for cliched writing then you might like Almost Moon.   Maybe I was somewhat turned off by the book as I have just read my first Margaret Atwood book, The Handmaid's Tale and found it such a delight.    The prose style  of Sebold compares quite unfavorably to that of Henry Fielding in Shamela.

"Shamela" by Henry Fielding

Shamela (1741) is Henry Fielding's biting and hilarious response to Pamela (1740) by Samuel Richardson.   Fielding, most famous as the author of Tom Jones and Joseph Andrews published this work under the name Conny Keyber and in fact never acknowledged authorship but it was from the start known to be his work.  

Pamela, told in epistolary fashion, is the story of a young country maid whose master continually makes many improper advances on her.   We see her attempts to ward of his advances and her virtue is eventually rewarded by her  marriage to her master. We also see her  transformation to an upper class wife.  Throughout the work Pamela is seen as a complete innocent, utterly naive in the ways of the world.

Pamela  was   extolled as an account of how virtuous young ladies should deport themselves.    It has been widely condemned by some as suggesting the women are simply commodities who lose their value when they lose their virginity.   The master is clearly a near rapist exploiting his position of power to abuse Pamela.   Other than his money, he seems a completely despicable person.

In Shamela (44 pages) we learn from the letters Shamela writes her mother that this was not quite how things were.   Shamela (that is revealed to be the real  name of Pamela) completely plans it all out.   She wears clothing designed to flatter her figure.    She allows the master to kiss her breasts while she fends him off by so inadvertently pushing him away with her hands in a way calculated to inflame him  even more.   Of course a simple country girl like Shamela is deeply humialated by all this and it is not her fault if her hands went astray during the encounter.  After all a simply country girl like Shamela did not realize  the master might somehow be more inflamed by this accident than reproached by it.

Here is some of the maternal advice that Shamela receives in a letter from her mother

When I advised you not to be guilty of follow, I meant no more than that you should take care to be well paid before hand, and not to trust to Promises, which a man seldom keeps, after he hath had his wicked Will.   And seeing you have a rich fool to deal with, your not making a good market will be the more inexcusable.

Shamela, as her mother pointed out, has already had a romantic encounter with Parson Williams.   Her mother is quite afraid her daughter will follow her example and tie herself to men of no economic value out of romantic attraction, only to be discarded once the bloom of youth is gone.   Shamela is a fast learner.   Her master returns home in a coach and she springs into action

I immediately run up to my Room, and stript, and washed and drest myself as well as I could, and put on my prettiest round ear'd Cap, and pulled down by Stays, to shew as much as I could of my Bosom, (for Parson Williams says that is the most beautiful part of a Woman) and then I practised over all my Airs before the glass.

Her mother advises Shamela not to worry once she gets the Squire to marry her she can indulge herself with Parson Williams or any other man she fancies as long as she is discreet.   One day the Squire comes into Shamela's room.   She pretends to sleep while he climbs into bed with her and takes considerable liberties with her person.  Just in time she awakes and begins to weep that a man she so loves would try to take advantage of her before marriage.   At last the wedding day arrives.   She tells her mother all about it.

In my last I left off at our sitting down to Supper on our Wedding Night, where I behaved with as much Bashfulness as the purest Virgin in the world.   The most difficult task for me was to blush.   My Husband was extreamly eager and impatient to have supper removed, after which he gave me leave to retire into my closet for a quater of an hour..I employed the time in writing Parson Williams, who as I formed you in my last, has been released, and presented to the Living with the Death of the last parson

Shamela (her nickname is "Sham"-I guess Fielding wanted to be sure his readers got that this was satire!) then pines for a man just out of prison who seduced her, using his position to his advantage just as he had done many times before.   As married life proceeds Shamela explains how a wife should use the misbehavior of a husband to extract the most guilty gifts from him.

Nothing can be more prudent in a wife, than a sullen Backwardness to Reconciliation;  it makes a husband fearful of offending by the length of his punishment.

As the marriage proceeds we see how Sham is preoccupied with finding ways to be with Pastor Williams.   She presents him to her husband as her spiritual adviser.   We see, Shamela alas does not, that the Parson cares nothing for her other than as a source of gratification (that is really not a big deal for him as it can easily be obtained) and hopes to find away to use her marriage to the squire to extract large donations to the church.  Shamela is both the shammer and the shammed.  

There are letters by several different persons in this work.   Each person has their own style of writing.   The spelling and punctuation were different in 1741 than they are now of course.   Shamela is depicted as an avid reader and has educated herself well above her station.   She is a very smart woman treated without condescension by Fielding.   Her mother has learned some hard lessons and tries to pass them along to her daughter.   Her mother knows Shamela is a fool for a handsome well spoken man like the Parson and tries guide her daughter without browbeating over her mistakes.   Clearly the mother has made some of her own.   The mother does profit from the marriage as was part of her intention all along, of course.   

Shamela is a very funny Novella.   Pamela is often portrayed as an anti-hero by feminist critics.   She is seen as a near fool whose whole purpose in life is to get a wealthy near rapist to marry her.   Her conditioning does not allow herself to enter into any sort of romantic encounter with a man she does not love so her economic needs force her to deceiver herself into thinking she is in love.  Once married, it is obvious to every one but Pamela that
 her future husband will abuse her and lose interest in her as she ages.   Now the question becomes if Pamela is the feminine anti-hero is Shamela a hero?   Is Shamela an 18th century woman asserting her rights who has the intelligence to see through the claims of the squire to love her?    Shamela knows what she is doing with her master, Pamela is in bad faith and either does not know what she is doing or more likely has it buried very deep in her consciousness.   (It has been about 15 years since I read Pamela and Clarisa.   There is a great deal of depth and artistry in these works.   Both of them have lot  to tell us about issues related to this challange.   Richardson was not, as he is often portrayed, a literary oppressor of women.  Clarisa is one of the longest novels in history).

Shamela is also a fool for Pastor Williams.   It looks like Shamela will out grow the Pastor as she ages and settles into her role of wife of a squire.   She is into The Reading Life and this has helped he develop her self consciousness and her insight.   My first guess and hope is Shamela will long outlive her husband and will go own to have lots of adventures, use the squires money to buy books and fancy clothes for herself and her mother.   I think maybe Shamela will always have a weakness for an attractive but somewhat wicked young man of the lower gentry but she will learn to have fun with that.   Pamela will end up a widow also but she will not be able to escape the roles society has imposed on her.   Shamela is a woman with a much greater sense of freedom in her life than Pamela and is much more in control of her life than Pamela. 

When I first decided I would include this work in the Women Unbound Challenge I had some serious reservations.   After all it does show a woman whose life revolves around a man and this  is not quite in accord wth the values of the challenge.   But then I thought more, Shamela has to live in her times, she has to use the only assests she has.   She does this well and is in charge of her life more than we might think.   As I predicted, she will out live her squire husband and be a well off woman fully in charge of her own life for many years.   There were very few options for advancement to  a lower class woman in England in 1741.    Shamela in under fifty pages gives us a vivid look at the life of an 18th century woman that we can today relate to, believe in and even like.  

Shamela can be read without reading Pamela first.   You may need to slow down a bit when you read it and the spelling and punctuation seem eratic by our standards.   To me it is a very funny very well written book that any one with a sense of humor and a little patience with the sentence structure of another era will enjoy.   I see it as totally deserving of a place on the Women Unbound Challenge.   We can learn as much from it as we can from the very poltically correct works of the 21th century.  

This is my fourth post for the November Novella Challenge.   I enjoyed participating in the challenge a lot and hope to be back in November 2010.

"The Handmaid's Tale" by Margaret Atwood

The Handmaid's Tale (1985, 389 pages) is the first work by Margaret Atwood that I have read.    It is in the genre of the dystopian novel. It is about an alternative future in which a church group has taken over the United States, which they rename "Gilead".   The setting is the late 20th century in what used to be Cambridge Massachusetts.  

The narrator of our story, which begins right before the church take over, is married to Luke.   She and Luke had an affair while Luke was married to another woman.  Luke divorced his wife and married Offred and the two of them have a three year old daughter.   One day she goes to use her ATM type device and it will not work.   The clerk in the store tells her that it is saying invalid account number.   She is indignant and says she will call her bank.   When she gets to her job at the library she calls the bank over and over for hours but she cannot get through.   Her very nervous male boss calls the all female work force to a meeting.   Everyone is being fired as of now.   All libraries in Gilead are to be closed.   When she gets home she finds out that it has been declared illegal for women to have bank accounts.   Their balances are to be transferred to their husbands or fathers.   If they have no husband or father the government will keep the money.   Women should never have worked in the first place.   This is explained as a blessing to the women as they will no longer have to burden their minds about money.    From now on it will be illegal for women to have jobs, read or for female children to receive any sort of education.   This is all presented as a wonderful lifting of burdens by the very paternal government.   Luke vanishes one day.   Her child is taken from her as only children born in a first marriage may stay with their parents.  Divorce, birth control and abortions are strictly illegal.   In order that children may be born in a religiously proper fashion, no pain killers of any kind are allowed at child birth

Women can only be in certain roles in society.   This is explained to them as a wonderful thing and woe unto a woman who does not love these ideas.

The highest status position is that of Wife of a government official.   There is a shortage of men in Gilead due to the very large number killed off in the civil war that the church take over produced.    High status males, called Commanders, are allowed to set up grand households.   Below Wife is  the position of Econowife.   That refers to a woman who may marry a lower status male but has to do all the house work herself and must have her children herself.   Next we have the position of Handmaiden.   There is a very low birth rate in Gilead, far below the replacement rate.   This is in part because atomic bombs were dropped on parts of the USA that resisted the church take over and radiation caused massive sterility as well as a very high portion of genetic defects.   Handmaiden's job is to have sex once a month with their Commander.  The wife is present and has a degrading  role to play.  The handmaiden wears a cloth bag over her head so she cannot see the Commander and to prevent any hint that this is a personal encounter.   Wives tend to hate handmaidens though it is illegal for them to directly kill them.   If someone does not fit into this new society or shows any sign of lack of enthusiasm for the new way of life they can be sent to what is called "The Colonies".   The colonies are those parts of the USA that did not accept the new government.   They were laid waste by atomic blasts.   Workers are send their to clean up the damage and bury millions of dead bodies.   Because of the radioactivity, the disease brought on by the unburied corpses that are everywhere and the extreme envirnmental degradation life expectancy in the colonies is three years.   That is also where the food is grown for Gilead, which may account for the low birth rates and the very high rate of severe birth defects.   Even though abortion is punishable by death defective babies, called "Shredders", are destroyed at birth.    Below the status of Handmaiden is the Martha who is a household servant that is not allowed to have children or marry.   Like the Romans and the Nazis, the rulers of Gilead know that subject people are best controlled on a day to day basis by their own kind.   The work of monitoring the women is done by Aunts, all of whom carry cattle prods on their belts and are fond of telling the women how lucky they are that there is no longer any degrading pornography, that they no longer have to strain their minds with decision making, that they no longer need fear rape  and that they are protected by their wonderful Commander.   If a woman does not agree fast enough she gets the cattle prod and worse maybe will be sent to the colonies.   We only learn gradually how the society works and how it came into place.   Everything is narrated by the handmaiden and she has access only to limited information, after all she is not even allowed to read any more.   Women cannot trust each other as they are trained to inform on negative thinkers.  The informant is showing herself to be a worthy daughter of the Republic of Gilead.   Men have various roles to play also.   Everyone but a Commander, who is also watched, has to wear a uniform based on their role in society.   If a Handmaiden fails to have a child in six years, she is rotated every two years to a new Commander, she is sent to the colonies.   Any child she has, as long as it is not a shredder, will be raised by the Wife or another family.   Once she has had a child and done her six years she can even dream of becoming an Aunt.   If she fails to have a child, most of the men have very low fertility rates, she is sent to the colonies.  

Gilead is beautifully realized and I at once believed it could exist.   There are a lot of questions that one will have in mind about how Gilead works but remember the story is told in the first person by a handmaiden who can ask no questions and is forbidden to read.   The Aunts tell the women  it will be easier on girls born in Gilead as they  will not have the burden of confused thoughts that the foolish custom of allowing women to be educated caused.   Now the women have no worries,  no decisions to  make, no children to rear (maybe Econowives raise their own children but we do not learn much about them or the Marthas), and a wonderful government to take care of them and protect them.   Of course every woman tells all she meets that she is so grateful for the changes.

This is the background in which the Handmaiden's Tale unfolds.  People being people not everything is really perfect in this paradise.   The unfolding of the story is wonderfully clever and imaginative.   Shocking and brutal things will happen but there is hope and the human spirit is far from defeated.    We will get to know the local Commander, his wife, some of the other women.   A commander can have multiple Marthas.   Barriers break down, the women compare notes and some strange relationships develop.   I was very taken when I saw the joy of the handmaiden when she got the chance to read some magazines.   Most preGilead magazines and books have, of course, been burned.  

The Handmaiden's Tale does a marvelous job creating an alternative future.   The characters are very well developed.    Anyone who has ever worked for a large corporation will see at once coworkers who would have made great Aunts.   The Handmaiden's Tale reminded me more of Brave New World than 1984.   To me, it stands with them as cautionary stories of the first order.   It is also very entertaining, fast paced and just a great story.   I have not relayed much of the actual plot line as it is so clever I do not want to spoil it for anyone.  

The Handmaiden's Tale seems like it was almost written with the Women Unbound Challenge in mind.   It is easy to follow and understand.   It is beautifully written.     I found myself completely taken into The Republic of Gilead. I hope my three daughters never have to live there.  It shows how women can be and often are their own  oppressors. It shows how people sell themselves for small worthless things.  It tells us something important about the reading life.   Dictators always try to stop The Reading Life.   A diverse range of  free reading has never ever been encouraged under any totalitarian regime, from the Romans on down to the days of Pot Pal in Cambodia where wearing glasses could get you executed.   The ending was a complete surprise and I loved how the book was closed.      She as written over thirty books so if anyone has any suggestions as to my second Atwood please post them.  

I just found out that today is Margaret Atwood's 70th Birthday.   The Mancester Guardian just a few minutes ago  published a very good article honoring this day.   To me the Manchester Guardian's literary section is a good source of information  on quality books.   I subscribe to their feed.

"Hard Luck" by Banana Yoshimoto

Hard Luck by Banana Yoshimoto (1999, translated from Japanese by Michael Emmerich, 2005) is published in the same book as Hardboiled.   I have already posted on Hardboiled.

Hard luck centers on a young woman waiting for her hospitalized sister to pass away.   Her parents, the fiance of the sister and his brother keep rotating vigil at her bedside.   The finance is not faithful in his attendance in the bed side and is dispised by the ill girls parents and sister.   His brother actually shows much more concern for the young woman than her fiance does.   The sister begins to feel an attraction to him but she does not know if it is just based on her growing feeling of  loneliness and  her admiration for the good character of the brother.  In her mind, she knows once the sister is lost the brother of the boyfriend will leave her life also.   The feelings in this work are below the surface.    Anger at the boyfriend is displaced anger over the young death of the sister and daughter. 

A feeling of sadness, of course, permeates this work.   We sense everyone will go on after the woman in the hospital is gone but no one will be quite the same.   

The sky is high and lonely and makes me feel alone.

Death is present in every aspect of life.

This is also a book about families, the ones we are born with and the ones we create.    

Eva of A Striped Armchair has recently done a very interesting post on this novella as well as Hardboiled.    

"People of the Book" by Geraldine Brooks

People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks (2008, 449 pages)   





People of the Book is about the attempt by a skilled book conservator, Hanna Heath from Australia to preserve in as pristine a condition as possible a very famous mauscript which gives the history of people of the Jewish faith in Sarajevo during the middle ages. Sarajevo is under near war conditions at the time. Part of her job is  to trace the history of the illuminated book, to find out as much as she can about where the book has been in the last 500 years or so. In her examination of the book she notices an insect wing, a wine stain, a cat hair and a saltwater stain. From these clues she is able to reconstruct the paths the book has taken all over Europe. The story line then goes into a narrative about other people who have had the book. We go back to Sarajevo in 1940 and see the heroic efforts it required to keep the Nazis from burning the book   I confess I did not know that the Nazis had employed a large number of people lead by "art experts" to seek out and destroy Jewish artifacts. Thousands of amazing old books were burned. We go back to Vienna in 1894, portrayed as a period of decadence. Each "flash back" section of the book is interleaved with current events in Hanna's effort to conserve and understand the book. We also see her interactions with museum directors, other book conservators and her very brilliant neurosurgeon Mother. Her mother looks on Hanna's profession as a waste of brain power. We also get to know about and see some of Hanna's love live. We go to Vienna in 1609. We go inside a harem in Seville in 1480.

Along the way we learn a lot about the art of book conservation. We learn how illuminated books were made. I was fascinated by the account of how the hairs of Persian Cats had a role to play in the creation of the Sarajevo Haggadah. ( I do not know if these and other details are correct but they sounded plausible throughout.) She makes skillfull use of historical detail. The level of research goes way beyond simply watching a couple of History Channel programs.

Some of the "flash back" sections did seem to go on a bit long. At times I sort of wished the character of the mother could be deleted as it did not add much to the story and was kind of a distraction. At times I also felt Hanna's quarrel with her mother sort of humanized her a bit so it was not a big negative for me.

People of the Book tells us some things about the reading life of those who collect books as artifacts. People read to get historical information to help them appreciate books as art objects. They feel a continuity with other owners of old books.

When I read of Hanna's attempt to trace the previous owners of the book I could not help but recall when a few years ago I found in a second hand book store a large number of the early volumes of the Yale Edition of Horace Walpole's Correspondence. A number of the books were over 50 years old. They had a lot of character. To me they were beautiful. On the inside cover of each of the twenty or so books was written, in what looked like a very old hand, the letter numbers that a previous owner of the book had liked most. I still wonder who that might have been. I imagine the person treasured those books for many years then one day somebody took them to a second hand book store. The book store clerk told me they had been on the shelve there for many years. As I left the store I saw her call the manager over to point out the person who for some clearly senseless reason had at last bought these books.

People of the Book is entertaining, makes good use of historical research and teaches us a lot of things we might not know too much about. The author has written two other historical novels, for one of which she got a Pulitzer prize. I hope to read them both in 2010.    It is an easy to read and follow book.


Joann of Lakeside Musings very recently posted a very interesting  account of a lecture by Gerladine Brooks on the historical novel that she was able to attend.

"Shame in the Blood" by Tetsuo Miura

Shame in the Blood by Tetsuo Miura (1964, translated by Andrew Driver, 2007 from Japanese, 216 pages)

I am reading this for the Japanese Literature Challenge 3

It seems to me that this book was published and marketed in a misleading fashion. It is marketed as a novel consisting of six interrelated stories about the same family. In fact it is five stories about the same married couple and a final forty five page story that has nothing at all to do with the first five stories. The first five stories are very interrelated and are in fact repetitious. It seems almost like the author went back and rewrote the stories so they could be marketed as a novel. The book was a great success when it was first published. It sold over a million copies and the author won the very prestigious Akutagawa Price for Literature, among other awards. Of course, that the book is collection of short stories published separately and then assembled as a novel does not take away from the literary merit of the work but it does seem a bit opportunistic.


The narrator of Shame in the Blood has six siblings. Four them have already killed themselves and one of the survivors is nearly blind and his brother disappeared many years ago. The narrator's family is poor and he is a struggling writer without a real job. He meets a waitress, they are in their early twenties, they marry and she ends up as the main source of income for the family. We are not really provided any clear explanation for why four of his siblings committed suicide. His mother died when he was young and we do meet his elderly father when they go back for a visit. The father laments that he has no accomplishments in life and that he is a complete failure and disgrace as a father. We see nothing overtly wrong with him. He is just a very sad old man. When his son comes back for a visit the wife is pregnant. The father is so happy he begins to make in secret a list of names for the as of yet unborn child. In short sequence the father dies (the family lingering over the dying father is very well relayed and is a very well done account of a meaningless life coming to an end), the wife miscarries. The family finds the list of names the father was making along with a note saying he prays the birth of his first grandchild will redeem his life somehow and give him a new start.

The stories do show some temporal confusion until you realize it not really a novel. In one story we are somehow back in mid 1944 WWII Japan with the then 15 or so year old narrator. He regrets he is a year too young to join the military. When the bombs fall all around him he wishes he will be killed so he can die an honorable death. He suggests many put themselves intentionally in harms way when the bombing raids begin (they happen often enough so the residents know what to expect) as a form of suicide. The suggestion is made that Japan has made at that point the decision to commit suicide as a nation.
This a death obsessed work. A feeling of futile sadness permeates it. We do feel we know the narrator and his wife well.

We see what it was like to be poor in Japan in the 1950s and early 1960s. The stories are well told and each of the five stories about the couple give us some new information about them. There is a lot of repeated material in the book which is a by product of the fact that the chapters were first published as stand alone stories. The author is a talented story teller and clearly knows how family history effects individuals in ways deeper than they may know.

There is not a lot of information on Tetsuo Miura on the internet in English. He was born in Aomori, Japan in 1931. I could not confirm if he is still alive. Several of his own siblings did kill themselves.

As to my endorsement of the book, I would say read it after your have read twenty or so of the better known Japanese novelists first. This is his only work translated into English, though he does have a lot of other novels and stories. The stories are very well told in a straightforward fashion. A number of the Goodreads.com commentators on Shame in the Blood did dislike the put together collection of stories marketed as novel feel that this work for sure has. In spite of this, it is well written. I would say buy it used or better yet get a library copy of this work as it was marketed in a perhaps deceitful way. I think if it were published now by a living author it would be condemned as a dishonest marketing ploy.