The Fraud by Zadie Smith - 2023

 The novels of Zadie Smith in the order in which I like them:

• Swing Time

• White Teeth

• On Beauty

• NW

• The Autograph Man

The Fraud is a strong challenger for first place .

I have also read, posted upon and enjoyed several of her short stores.  Additionally I have enjoyed  and learned from articles in both of her essay collections.  I have listened to a number of lectures on YouTube.  For sure I see a Nobel Prize in her future.

"ABOUT THE FRAUD

The New York Times bestseller • One of the New York Times 10 Best Books of the Year • One of NPR’s Best Books of the Year • Named a Best Book of the Year by Publishers Weekly and BookPage • One of Oprah Daily’s Best Novels of 2023

“[A] brilliant new entry in Smith’s catalog . . . The Fraud is not a change for Smith, but a demonstration of how expansive her talents are.” —Los Angeles Times

From acclaimed and bestselling novelist Zadie Smith, a kaleidoscopic work of historical fiction set against the legal trial that divided Victorian England, about who gets to tell their story—and who gets to be believed

It is 1873. Mrs. Eliza Touchet is the Scottish housekeeper—and cousin by marriage—of a once-famous novelist, now in decline, William Ainsworth, with whom she has lived for thirty years.

Mrs. Touchet is a woman of many interests: literature, justice, abolitionism, class, her cousin, his wives, this life and the next. But she is also sceptical. She suspects her cousin of having no talent; his successful friend, Mr. Charles Dickens, of being a bully and a moralist; and England of being a land of facades, in which nothing is quite what it seems.

Andrew Bogle, meanwhile, grew up enslaved on the Hope Plantation, Jamaica. He knows every lump of sugar comes at a human cost. That the rich deceive the poor. And that people are more easily manipulated than they realize. When Bogle finds himself in London, star witness in a celebrated case of imposture, he knows his future depends on telling the right story.

The “Tichborne Trial”—wherein a lower-class butcher from Australia claimed he was in fact the rightful heir of a sizable estate and title—captivates Mrs. Touchet and all of England. Is Sir Roger Tichborne really who he says he is? Or is he a fraud? Mrs. Touchet is a woman of the world. Mr. Bogle is no fool. But in a world of hypocrisy and self-deception, deciding what is real proves a complicated task. . . .

Based on real historical events, The Fraud is a dazzling novel about truth and fiction, Jamaica and Britain, fraudulence and authenticity and the mystery of “other people.” " from Penquin Press - the Publisher 

The Fraud vividly depicts the poor of London seen through the eyes of the affluent.  The account of the cruelty of  the lives of slaves on sugar producing islands is  very powerful. Smith shows us how enslaved persons, especially women, rely on magic, old beliefs to maintain an identity.  Enslaved women, when young, often are subject to sexual imposition by owners or their surrogates.  .

Zadie Smith is the author of the novels White Teeth, The Autograph Man, On Beauty, NW and Swing Time; as well as a novella, The Embassy of Cambodia; three collections of essays, Changing My Mind, Feel Free and Intimations; a collection of short stories, Grand Union; and the play, The Wife of Willesden, adapted from Chaucer. She is also the editor of The Book of Other People. Zadie Smith was born in north-west London, where she still lives.

"Love So Fleeting, Love So Fine" - A Short Story by Carol Shields- 8 Pages - included in The Collected Stories of Carol Shields- 2004

 This year, Buried in Print, a marvelous blog I have followed for over ten years,is doing a read through of the short stories of Carol Shields. I hope to participate fully in this event.

The more I read in the stories of Carol Shields the more grateful I am to Buried in Print for turning me on to her work. There are sixty some stories in the collection,it is my hope to read and post on them all in 2024.

Buriedinprint.com

"Love So Fleeting, Love So Fine" is the 15th story by Carol Shields I have so far posted upon.  It opens with a rather  man seeing a sign in the sign in the window of an orthopaedic shoe store, "Wendy is Back".  He does not know Wendy and wonders why her return should be of significance.  He begins to wonder where Wendy has been.  He then imagines that the clients of the store must have received tender and careful treatment from her.

"From North Winnipeg they came, from East Kildonan and Fort Garry and Southwood and even Brandon so that their warped and crooked and cosmically disfavored feet could be taken into Wendy’s smooth young hands, examined minutely and murmured over—but in that merry little voice of hers that made people think of the daughters they’d never had. Into her care they could safely put the shame of their ancient bunions, their blue-black swollen ankles, their blistered heels. Her strong, unerring touch never shrank when it came to straightening out crippled toes or testing with her healthy thumbs that peculiar soft givingness that indicates a fallen arch. By sheer banter, by a kind of chiding playfulness, she absolved her clients of the rasp of old calluses, the yellowness of soles, the damp dishonor attached to foot odor, foot foulness, foot obloquy, foot ignominy."

He concludes the story with some reflection on women he has loved.

The Carol Shields Literary Trust Website has an excellent biography

https://www.carol-shields.com/biography.html

Some People Need Killing: a Memoir of Murder in My Country - by Patricia Evangelista.- 2023 - 429 Pages

 Some People Need Killing: a Memoir of Murder in My Country - by Patricia Evangelista.- 2023 - 429 Pages

"TIME’S #1 NONFICTION BOOK OF THE YEAR • A NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW TOP 10 BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR • A “riveting” (The Atlantic) account of the Philippines’ state-sanctioned killings of its citizens under President Rodrigo Duterte, hailed as “a journalistic masterpiece” (The New Yorker)

 

“Tragic, elegant, vital . . . Evangelista risked her life to tell this story.”—Tara Westover, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Educated

 

FINALIST FOR THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY’S HELEN BERNSTEIN BOOK AWARD • LONGLISTED FOR THE WOMEN’S PRIZE • A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Economist, Chicago Public Library, CrimeReads, "

Rodrigo Duterte 

Born: March 28, 1945 (age 79)

Presidential term: June 30, 2016 – June 30, 2022

 President of the Philippines (2016–2022), Mayor of Davao City (2013–2016), Vice-Mayor of Davao City (2010–2013), Mayor of Davao City (2001–2010), 

Education: San Beda College of Law (1968–1972), Lyceum of the Philippines University (1968), Cor Jesu College, Inc., Ateneo de Davao University Grade School, Laboon Elementary 

Some People Need Killing: a Memoir of Murder in My Country - by Patricia Evangelista.- 2023 - is a masterpiece on numerous levels.  As reportage of the war on drugs of Rodrigo Duterte (an estimated 20,000 people died in extrajudicial killings), an account of the impact of working as a reporter on the drug war on a relatively highly educated young woman, a brilliant account of the use of Orwellian "Double Speak", a presentation of life among the poorest in the Philippines and a history lesson weaved into the structure of the book.

(A good summary of the war on drugs can be found at

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philippine_drug_war)

I wish or feel a need to convey my own history with the Philippines.

I am an American,  I grew up in Florida. In 2004 I moved permanently to Quezon City, an area that figures very much in the book. I married a wonderful Filipino lady and became the defacto father of her three daughters.  I sent them to college, the youngest at the same university as Patricia Evangelista.

We lived in a gated walled condo community. Nobody gets in without being screened  by armed guards,The residents are doctors, lawyers, business owners and individuals with substantial private worth.  Our barangay has  numerous similar condo communities and also very impoverished areas,  Nearby are huge beautiful malls with four Starbucks and outlets where you can select your $10,000 dollar purse. You pass children playing in mud puddles and Scary to us looking slums which are far from the ones where the drug killings were focused.

When Roberto Duterte  began his successful campaign for president he stated exactly what his top priority would be, to eliminate drug usage in the Philippines. He stated he would do what ever was necessary to achieve this goal.  He said his objective was to protect Filipino children from drug dealers.  

In our community he had significant support. People wanted a strong leader. Unlike other past presidents he disclosed all his assets and Evangelista makes no suggestions of personal financial corruption. Unlike American politicians in their seventies when asked about his health he said "you name a disease and I probably have it". When then President Donald Trump visited the country he staged an elaborate event and gave a speech praising trump to the sky. After that the Philippines got massive American aid in the form of weapons.

My American family and friends thought the drug killings were everywhere and asked if I was in danger.  I told them if not for TV news we would not even know about the killings.  People reported Street crime was way down.  Once a presentation was given in our community meeting house on the war in drugs in our barangay.  An exact account of those killed was given. As the only foreigner there they asked me  my thoughts. I told them I grew up where there is a significant drug problem but here in our community I see only family focused clean living people and I was shocked by Reports of  millions of drug users,   Most were on a version of meth amphetamines.  The government made no distinctions between a casual user of marijuana and a daily user of heroin. All were considered dangerous to society.

Evangelista goes into personal detail on police who killed for bounty money or because they believed it was the right thing for the country as well as on drug dealers.

From Fully Booked- An excellent source for the book, in several Manila malls

"fearless, powerfully written on-the-ground account of a nation careening into violent autocracy—told through harrowing stories of the Philippines’ state-sanctioned killings of its citizens—from a journalist of international renown

“Tragic, elegant, vital . . . Evangelista risked her life to tell this story.”—Tara Westover, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Educated

“My job is to go to places where people die. I pack my bags, talk to the survivors, write my stories, then go home to wait for the next catastrophe. I don’t wait very long.”

Journalist Patricia Evangelista came of age in the aftermath of a street revolution that forged a new future for the Philippines. Three decades later, in the face of mounting inequality, the nation discovered the fragility of its democratic institutions under the regime of strongman Rodrigo Duterte.

Some People Need Killing is Evangelista’s meticulously reported and deeply human chronicle of the Philippines’ drug war. For six years, Evangelista chronicled the killings carried out by police and vigilantes in the name of Duterte’s war on drugs—a war that has led to the slaughter of thousands—immersing herself in the world of killers and survivors and capturing the atmosphere of fear created when an elected president decides that some lives are worth less than others.

The book takes its title from a vigilante whose words seemed to reflect the psychological accommodation that most of the country had made: “I’m really not a bad guy,” he said. “I’m not all bad. Some people need killing.”

A profound act of witness and a tour de force of literary journalism, Some People Need Killing is also a brilliant dissection of the grammar of violence and an important investigation of the human impulses to dominate and resist."

Patricia Evangelista is a trauma journalist and former investigative reporter for the Philippine news company Rappler. Her reporting on armed conflict and disaster was awarded the Kate Webb Prize for exceptional journalism in dangerous conditions. She was a Headlands Artist in Residence, a New America ASU Future Security Fellow, and a fellow of the Logan Nonfiction Program, the Civitella Ranieri Foundation, and the Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma. Her work has earned local and international acclaim. She lives in Manila

This is a wonderful book.  I am very grateful to Patricia Evangelista for her insights and hard work

Mel Ulm

"A Word" A short story by Carol Shields and Anne Giardini - 12 Pages - Included in The Collected Short Stories of Carol Shields- 2004

 "A Word" A short story by Carol Shields and Anne Giardini - 12 Pages - Included in The Collected Short Stories of Carol Shields- 2004

(Anne Giardini, OC, OBC, QC, is a Canadian business executive, journalist, lawyer and writer. She is the oldest daughter of late Canadian novelist Carol Shields. Giardini is licensed to practice law in British Columbia (and formerly in Ontario and Washington State). As a journalist, Giardini has contributed to the National Post as a columnist. She lives in Vancouver, British Columbia with her husband of more than 30 years. They have three grown children. She has written two novels, The Sad Truth about Happiness (2005) and Advice for Italian Boys (2009), both published by HarperCollins. Giardini and her son, Nicholas Giardini, edited Startle and Illuminate (Random House Canada, 2016), a book of Carol Shields' thoughts and advice on writing. Giardini served as the 11th chancellor of Simon Fraser University from 2014 to 2020. Wikipedia)

This year, Buried in Print, a marvelous blog I have followed for over ten years,is doing a read through of the short stories of Carol Shields. I hope to participate fully in this event.

The more I read in the stories of Carol Shields the more grateful I am to Buried in Print for turning me on to her work. There are sixty some stories in the collection,it is my hope to read and post on them all in 2024.

Buriedinprint.com

"A Word" is the 14th story from The Collected Short Stories of Carol Shields upon which I have so far posted upon.  

The story focuses on three adult siblings in the Wood family, two brothers and a sister.  Their not too long ago deceased father, little mention is made of their mother is very much a factor in their lives.  As the story opens Ellen is preparing for a solo violin performance.  One of the brothers repairs guitars.  The family is very into a sense of being elite, depending the best from themselves.

The story makes brilliant use of the juxtaposition of family history to European history:

"Many generations of Woods had worn the gold necklace. Three Woods had been married in it. A Wood had worn it to a funeral mass for Czar Nicholas. A Wood had shaken the hand of the great Schiffmann while wearing it. A Wood had hidden it behind a plaster wall in the city of Berlin. Another Wood had carried it out of Spain in 1936 sewn into the hem of a blanket."

Here is the account of the start of the concert:

"Elke had just arrived in the wings when the lights were dimmed and the noise from the audience thinned to a softer sound. She stood, bent slightly forward, with one arm crooked around the violin and the bow held lightly in the opposite hand. Under the surprising folds of the costume, which she now realized smelled strongly of mothballs and dust, her body felt cool and determined. It seemed suddenly as though Papa were near—in the chamber of the violin or wrapped around the rosined strings of her bow. But she knew this was only an illusion stirred by the hard lights and the rising excitement. “He’s gone,” she told herself, looking down at the backs of her hands. “I’m sure of that, at least.”

The Carol Shields Literary Trust Website has an excellent biography

https://www.carol-shields.com/biography.html

"Buxton Hill" by Kevin Barry - 10 Pages -included with Cork Stories - Edited by Madeleine D’Arcy & Laura McKenna - 2024 - An Irish Short Story Month Work

"

"Buxton Hill" by Kevin Barry - 10 Pages -included with Cork Stories - Edited by Madeleine D’Arcy & Laura McKenna - 2024 - An Irish Short Story Month Work

 Irish Short Story Month XIII 2024

April to ?

I first read a short story by Kevin Barry 12 years ago during Irish Short Story Month in 2012.  Since then I have posted on more of his works, novels and Short Stories.

"Buxton Hill" by Kevin Barry is the 5th story from the collection Cork Stories - Edited by Madeleine D’Arcy & Laura McKenna - 2024 I have so far posted upon.  I intend to post upon all 18 Stories in the collection.

"Buxton Hill", set in Cork, is a first person account of a man, living in a house converted to a number of apartments.  He is single, is a writer of sorts but hardly a prosperous one. There is not quite a standard plot, much of the story is given up to his observations on the other people living in the house on Buxton Hill.

"J thought he was gone for good. October the 2nd since Toberty’s been seen on the premises. I have four bails of briquettes gone from his back kitchen. The evidence is long destroyed but he’ll have his suspicions and he has a brother in Cork jail for murder. I’m not saying that kind of thing runs in families. I mean runs-in-families is not an area any of us, around this place, want to get involved in. I could go to my father’s house. But there’s more to that"

Kevin Barry is the author of the highly acclaimed novel City of Bohane and two short-story collections, Dark Lies the Island and There Are Little Kingdoms. He was awarded the Rooney Prize in 2007 and won the Sunday Times EFG Short Story Award in 2012. For City of Bohane, he was short-listed for the Costa First Novel Award and the Irish Book Award, and won the Author’s Club Best First Novel Prize, the European Union Prize for Literature, and the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. His short fiction has appeared in The New Yorker and elsewhere. He lives in County Sligo in Ireland.

Whether you are just getting started in Irish Short Stories or have been an 

avid reader for fifty years, Cook Stories, published by Doire Press, will delight you with 18 Stories.

The best way to purchase this marvelous collection is via the Publisher Doire Press 

https://www.doirepress.com

"The Metaohor is Dead" - A Short Story by Carol Shields- 2 Pages -included in The Collected Short Stories of Carol Shields- 2004

This year, Buried in Print, a marvelous blog I have followed for over ten years,is doing a read through of the short stories of Carol Shields. I hope to participate fully in this event.

The more I read in the stories of Carol Shields the more grateful I am to Buried in Print for turning me on to her work. There are sixty some stories in the collection,it is my hope to read and post on them all in 2024.

Buriedinprint.com

"The Metaphor is Dead" is the 13th story by Carol Shields upon which I have posted. At only two pages it is the briefest work so far and one of the strangest.

There is no real plot, the entire story is given over to a professor holding forth on what he sees as the decay of literature.

"THE METAPHOR IS DEAD,” bellowed the gargantuan professor, his walrus mustache dancing and his thundery eyebrows knitting together rapaciously. “Those accustomed to lunching at the high table of literature will now be able to nosh at the trough on a streamlined sub minus the pickle. Banished is that imperial albatross, that dragooned double agent, that muddy mirror lit by the false flashing signal like and by that even more presumptuous little sugar lump as. The gates are open, and the prisoner, freed of his shackles, has departed without so much as a goodbye wave to those who would take a simple pomegranate and insist it be the universe."

I will give our professor the last word:

"Initially a toy of the literati,” the fiery professor cried, “the metaphor grew like a polyp on the clean chamber of poetry whose friendly narrative lines had previously lain as simply as knives and forks in a kitchen drawer and whose slender, unjointed nouns, colloquial as onions, became puffed up like affected dowagers, swaying, pelvis forward, into a Victorian parlor of cluttered predicates, where they took to sitting about on the embroidered cushions of metonymy and resting their metered feet on quirky mean-spirited oxymorons."

The Carol Shields Literary Trust Website has an excellent biography


https://www.carol-shields.com/biography.html

Nothing Surer" - A Short Story by Gráinne Murphy - 10 Pages - included with Cork Stories - Edited by Madeleine D’Arcy & Laura McKenna - 2024 - An Irish Short Story Month Work

 

 "Nothing Surer" - A Short Story by Gráinne Murphy - 10 Pages - included with Cork Stories - Edited by Madeleine D’Arcy & Laura McKenna - 2024 - An Irish Short Story Month Wor

Irish Short Story Month XIII- 2024

April to June 1

"Nothing Surer"   by Gráinnec Murphy, a resident of West Cork, is the 4th of the 18 short stories in Cork Stories I intend to read and post upon during Irish Short Story Month XIII.

"Nothing Surer" resonated for me in an almost painfully personal manner.

The story centers on the daily life of a widower. He lost his wife, 

his life was built around a few years ago, and now he tries to go on alone.

 "The world gone to holy hell and himself weakening by the new time. Still, if time was a curse, routine was the cure. Today just a day like any other. The ball of the hammer was solid against his heel when he sat on the edge of the bed. Shoes on, face the world. Ellen would phone in the afternoon, she’d said." 

He seems about 70, people treat him in a kindly but patronising fashion.

It is Halloween. When Aine was alive and Ellen their child young, he always carved a pumpkin.  Today he will visit her grave.

"The hill up to the graveyard was slow going but pleasant enough, with the seagulls perched on the rigging of the boats and shouting out everything they could see. Áine loved that sound, she told him, when they were walking home from a dance early in their courting. ‘The lonesomeness of it makes me feel dramatic,’ she said, linking his arm. The vodka and orange was showing on her. ‘Bury me where I can hear seagulls.’ ‘I will,’ he said, where another man might have thought her forward to be imagining her future with him in it.  The graveyard gate opened silently. He closed it. Opened it again."

My wife passed away long before she should have two years ago.

These lines are perfectly expressive of my feelings, my cherished hope to be reunited with my wife:

"He took out the brush and gathered the biscuit crumbs into a tidy heap in the corner, where the dustpan made short work of them. A man on his own had to keep the place right. He didn’t want Áine arriving back to collect his soul for heaven, only to be distracted by inches of dust on the mantelpiece. She would insist on cleaning everything, wasting precious minutes in the hereafter. Were the minutes still precious if they were infinite? He could be finding out."

"Gráinne grew up in Kilmichael, in rural county Cork. At university, she studied Applied Psychology, then forensic research, where she worked as a research assistant. Switching to human resources, Gráinne worked in training and development for several years before moving to Belgium with her family. While in Brussels, Gráinne began to work as a self-employed proofreader, primarily working with research consultancies in the areas of human rights and environmental issues. She returned to Ireland in 2016 and now lives near the West Cork coast with her family, where she continues to work as a copy editor.

Since 2012, Gráinne has been writing both long and short fiction. Her work often reflects her interest in family and identity, in those bittersweet moments where we have to stare life down and choose who we want to be.  

A winner of the Irish Writers’ Centre Novel Fair 2019, Gráinne’s novels have been shortlisted for the Caledonia Novel Award 2019 and Blue Pencil Agency First Novel Award 2019 and longlisted for the Lucy Cavendish Fiction Prize 2018 and Mslexia Novel Award 2017. Her short stories have appeared in the Fish Anthology 2020, RiPPLE Anthology 2017 and Nivalis 2015. 

Gráinne’s short story Further West, was longlisted for the Sunday Times Audible Short Story Award in May 2021.

Gráinne’s debut novel Where the Edge Is was published by Legend Press in September 2020. The Ghostlights was published in 2021, followed by Winter People in 2022. Greener will be published in Spring 2024. All are published by Legend Press."

From https://www.grainnemurphy.ie/writing/about-me

Whether you are just getting started in Irish Short Stories or have been an 

avid reader for fifty years, Cook Stories, published by Doire Press, will delight you with 18 Stories.

The best way to purchase this marvelous collection is via the Publisher Doire Press 

https://www.doirepress.com

Mel Ulm

The Reading Life

Stolen Words The Nazi Plunder of Jewish Books by Mark Glickman - 2016 - 344 Pages

 Stolen Words The Nazi Plunder of Jewish Books by Mark Glickman - 2016 - 344 Pages is a beautiful, brilliant book.  I offer my great thanks to Rabbi Glickman for sharing so much essential knowledge about Jewish traditions and the efforts of the Nazis to destroy Jewish Culture with us,

"Stolen Words is an epic story about the largest collection of Jewish books in the world—tens of millions of books that the Nazis looted from European Jewish families and institutions. Nazi soldiers and civilians emptied Jewish communal libraries, confiscated volumes from government collections, and stole from Jewish individuals, schools, and synagogues. Early in their regime the Nazis burned some books in spectacular bonfires, but most they saved, stashing the literary loot in castles, abandoned mine shafts, and warehouses throughout Europe. It was the largest and most extensive book-looting campaign in history.

 

After the war, Allied forces discovered these troves of stolen books but quickly found themselves facing a barrage of questions. How could the books be identified? Where should they go? Who had the authority to make such decisions? Eventually the military turned the books over to an organization of leading Jewish scholars called Jewish Cultural Reconstruction, Inc.—whose chairman was the acclaimed historian Salo Baron and whose on-the-ground director was the philosopher Hannah Arendt—with the charge of establishing restitution protocols.

 

Stolen Words is the story of how a free civilization decides what to do with the material remains of a world torn asunder, and how those remains connect survivors with their past. It is the story of Jews struggling to understand the new realities of their post-Holocaust world and of Western society’s gradual realization of the magnitude of devastation wrought by World War II. Most of all, it is the story of people —of Nazi leaders, ideologues, and Judaica experts; of Allied soldiers, scholars, and scoundrels; and of Jewish communities, librarians, and readers around the world."  From Nebraska University Press  - the Publisher 

Most people know the Nazis burned Jewish Books but my guess is few know that they stole millions of books from Jewish collections and individuals. Their purpose was to use them to document their fantasies about Jewish plots and to place the works in a planned museum of Jewish culture to be built  after a victory which never happened.

Glickman describes Germany as a country that respected the power of books.  That is why they were so concerned to capture Jewish Books. Likewise he details the great importance of studying the written word in Jewish History as well as the widespread love of books in Eastern European and Russian Jewish communities.

He takes us way back in Jewish and German history and ends up  with his experiences teaching in a summer camp for teenagers on Jewish culture 

Rabbi Mark Glickman has served at congregations in Ohio, Washington State, and Colorado. He is the author of Sacred Treasure—The Cairo Genizah: The Amazing Discoveries of Forgotten Jewish History in an Egyptian Synagogue Attic.

"Fragility" - A Short Story by Carol Shields - included in The Collected Short Stories of Carol Shields- 2004

"Fragility"- A Short Story by Carol Shields - included in The Collected Short Stories of Carol Shields- 2004
 

This year, Buried in Print, a marvelous blog I have followed for over ten years,is doing a read through of the short stories of Carol Shields. I hope to participate fully in this event.

The more I read in the stories of Carol Shields the more grateful I am to Buried in Print for turning me on to her work. There are sixty some stories in the collection,it is my hope to read and post on them all in 2024.

Buriedinprint.com

The Carol Shields Literary Trust Website has an excellent biography 

"Fragility" is the 12th Short Story by Carol Shields I have the great pleasure of reading.

As the story opens a couple married some twenty years are on a plane, flying over the Rocky Mountains on their way to Vancover..  They are moving there because the husband has been transferred, they are searching for a house to buy,   in January their son died at age 15.

It is not easy to bring a 20 year marriage to life in nine pages but Shields does it brilliantly.

"WE ARE FLYING OVER THE ROCKIES on our way to Vancouver, and there sits Ivy with her paperback. I ask myself: Should I interrupt and draw her attention to the grandeur beneath us? In a purely selfish sense, watching Ivy read is as interesting as peering down at those snowy mountains. She turns the pages of a book in the same way she handles every object, with a peculiar respectful gentleness, as though the air around it were more tender than ordinary air. I’ve watched her lift a cup of tea with this same abstracted grace, cradling a thick mug in a way that transforms it into something precious and fragile."

We follow them as a real estate agent shows them  numerous houses.

Like her other stories the prose is exquisite and the wisdom from a deep source.

Practical Magic by Alice Hoffman 1997 - 286 Pages

Practical Magic by Alice Hoffman 1997 - 286 Pages

 Alice Hoffman works I have so far read:

The Marriage of Opposites- 2015

"Everything My Mother Taught Me" - 2016

"The Book Store Sisters" -2022

The Foretelling - 2006

"Conjure" - 2014

Aquamarine- 2001

The Ice Queen - 2006

Property Of -1977

Skylight- 2007

The Invisible Hour 2023

Rules of Magic- 2017

Practical Magic is a captivating story about two sisters, Gillian and Sally Owens, who are descended from a long line of witches. Raised by their eccentric aunts in a small town in Massachusetts, the sisters  encounter prejudice and fear from their neighbors due to their family's magical heritage.   

The sisters attempt to live normal lives, but their family heritage and magical abilities keep them from fitting in. Gillian, the younger sister, is carefree and embraces witchcraft, while Sally, the elder sister, tries to suppress her magical side.

The novel explores themes of family, love, loss, and the power of female friendship. It's a delightful and heartwarming story that has become a modern classic.

The novel has also spawned several sequels, including The Rules of Magic (2017), Magic Lessons (2020), and The Book of Magic (2021). These books delve deeper into the history of the Owens family and explore the lives of other characters from the original novel.

Practical Magic has been adapted into a popular 1998 film starring Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman. I hope to see it in a few days 

Plentiful Country: The Great Potato Famine and the Making of Irish New York by Tyler Anbinder- 2024 - 430 Pages

 

Plentiful Country: The Great Potato Famine and the Making of Irish New York by Tyler Anbinder- 2024 - 430 Pages

Irish Potato Famine

1845 to 1852

An estimated one million Irish died and another one million emigrated- mostly to America with New York City as their point of entry

I have read numerous books on the impact and causes of The Irish Potato Famine. By far the best account I have read is in Plentiful Country: The Great Potato Famine and the Making of Irish New York on their occupational development, how they made a living and supported their families.

Migration to America was not cheap. First one had to book passage to England and then buy a ticket to America. This meant the poorest Irish could not leave. (About five percent of Emirates had their trips paid for by absentee landlords.) 

There were several classes of tickets, most travelled in steerage. The trip could take 30 days food had to be brought for the passengers trip unless they were in first class. Upon arrival a job and a place to live were of highest priority.

Anbinder explains the concept of "chain migration".. As soon as they could an emigrate,often a man, would send money back to his family for others to emigrate. An older arrival would help new arrivals find jobs. Some had valuable job skills , money to start a business and some nothing 

Anbinder details how the records of Emigrate Savings Bank allowed him to follow the working and personal lives of famine era Irish emigrants.  

The bank was founded in 1850 by 18 members of the Irish Emigrant Society, with the support of Archbishop John Hughes, purposed of the goal of serving the needs of the Irish community in New York City. The headquarters was located at on 49 Chambers Street in Manhattan.

Emigrant Savings collected extensive records of the arriving Irish immigrants to America, which were later donated to the New York Public Library and serve as valuable genealogical resources that are the core resource for Anbinder.

To open an account you had to supply your current address, your time of arrival in New York City, where you were from in Ireland, list your current occupation, any relatives you have living in New York or back in Ireland, your children and full data on any spouse you might have, Every time you made a deposit the bank updated your records. Most Irish lived in tenements without locked doors so they wanted bank accounts. Emigrate savings had only largely Irish employees and was very conservatively managed.

From the Publisher 

"A breathtaking new history of the Irish immigrants who arrived in the United States during the Great Potato Famine, showing how their strivings in and beyond New York exemplify the astonishing tenacity and improbable triumph of Irish America.

  

In 1845, a fungus began to destroy Ireland’s potato crop, triggering a famine that would kill one million Irish men, women, and children—and drive over one million more to flee for America. Ten years later, the United States had been transformed by this stupendous migration, nowhere more than New York: by 1855, roughly a third of all adults living in Manhattan were immigrants who had escaped the hunger in Ireland. These so-called “Famine Irish” were the forebears of four U.S. presidents (including Joe Biden) yet when they arrived in America they were consigned to the lowest-paying jobs and subjected to discrimination and ridicule by their new countrymen. Even today, the popular perception of these immigrants is one of destitution and despair. But when we let the Famine Irish narrate their own stories, they paint a far different picture.

In this magisterial work of storytelling and scholarship, acclaimed historian Tyler Anbinder presents for the first time the Famine generation’s individual and collective tales of struggle, perseverance, and triumph. Drawing on newly available records and a ten-year research initiative, Anbinder reclaims the narratives of the refugees who settled in New York City and helped reshape the entire nation. Plentiful Country is a tour de force—a book that rescues the Famine immigrants from the margins of history and restores them to their rightful place at the center of the American story. " 

Using data from the records of The Emirate Bank, Anbinder follows the life histories of numerous Famine Emirates. Many prospered others struggled to get along. Most no matter what way preferred America to Ireland. Anbinder traces the spread of the Irish through out the country,  

From Anbinder's conclusion 

"How had the Famine immigrants achieved this improbable success? First, notwithstanding the assertions of native-born Americans then and historians ever since, the Famine Irish were not overwhelmingly forced into menial day labor upon arrival. Only about half of the male Famine immigrants began their lives in America in these low-paying, perilous positions. For every Famine immigrant who had to take day labor or similar work upon landing in New York, there was another who arrived with desirable vocational experience—training as a craftsman, or experience operating a small business, or a background working as a clerk behind a desk or counter—that allowed them to find comparable jobs in Manhattan. Then, as now, Americans assumed that the immigrants who arrived on America’s shores must have been penniless paupers, the dregs of their homelands, when in fact such migrants have never made up a very large proportion of those who move to the United States. That is the case today, and that was the case for the Famine Irish, even though contemporaries failed to recognize that fact. Second, those who did start out as day laborers were hardly trapped in those positions. Forty-one percent of men whose first American jobs are best described as unskilled and who were still alive ten years later ended their careers higher up the socioeconomic ladder than where they began, and three-quarters of these social climbers finished their working days in white-collar occupations. Some became clerks, salesmen, or civil servants, but the vast majority (three out of four) opened their own business, running a saloon, grocery, or other retail enterprise. Skilled craftsmen were not trapped in their occupations either—thousands of them opened retail establishments like saloons and groceries, and still more started businesses related to their artisanal trade. To say that unskilled and artisan Famine immigrants “seldom rose from the bottom of American urban society,” as prominent scholars of the Irish experience in America have suggested for generations, is simply not true. Further evidence that the Famine immigrants had more control over their fates than previously understood is found in their savings accounts. The Famine refugees saved a lot more in those accounts than their native-born neighbors imagined. Leaving aside those who emigrated as children (and therefore had the advantages of an American education) as well as those who died before living for a decade in the United States, we find that male Famine immigrants living in New York or Brooklyn saved, on average, $463 in their accounts, equal to about $17,000 today (the median high balance was $291). Even if we take only the immigrants who started at the bottom of the socioeconomic ladder and never climbed any higher, the level of savings is still impressive."

Tyler Anbinder is an emeritus professor of history at George Washington University, where he taught courses on the history of American immigration and the American Civil War era. He is the author of three award-winning books: "Nativism and Slavery: The Northern Know Nothings and the Politics of the 1850s" (1992); "Five Points: The Nineteenth-Century New York Neighborhood that Invented Tap Dance, Stole Elections, and Became the World’s Most Notorious Slum" (2001); and "City of Dreams: The 400-Year Epic History of Immigrant New York." Anbinder has won fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities and served as the Fulbright Thomas Jefferson Distinguished professor of History at the University of Utrecht. His fourth book, Plentiful Country: The Great Potato Famine and the Making of Irish New York was published last month 

I hope to read his other books soon.

Plentiful Country: The Great Potato Famine and the Making of Irish New York is a wonderful book.

Mel Ulm

 

"Advise and Sandwiches” - A Short Story by Pat O’Connor - from his collection People in My Brain - 2019 - An Irish Short Story Month Work

 Irish Short Story Month XIII - March to May 2024

"Advise and Sandwiches” - A Short Story by Pat O’Connor - from his collection People in My Brain - 2019 - An Irish Short Story Month XIII Work

Advice and Sandwiches. Short story; First published in Irish Independent November 2011. Available in the Hennessy New Irish Writing Anthology, New Island, c.April 2015.

As the story opens Julia has just left her office for lunch.  She is worried she will be fired soon, her results are good and her clients like her but things just feel wrong to her.  Her boyfriend just told her he has met someone “really exciting” and is moving on.  He seems to expect her to be happy for him.  She feels in strong need of some life directing advise.  Suddenly she sees a just opened sandwich shop sign  that intrigues her.

“A sign over the opening said Advice and Sandwiches, and a placard said Queue here - Advice from €5 - Gourmet Sandwiches free. The queue was the shape of a U, with a rope on little white poles to keep order. A burst of laughter rose from the crowd. It was a good-natured sound. Julie strode past. There was a cheer and clapping. She took a quick, grudging glance. People were saying ‘Aww’ like they were affected by something.”

As Julie waits in line she overhears some advise:

“A male voice called out: ‘I hate my job. What’ll I do?’ ‘Either make it so you like it, or else live cheaper, build up cash, then resign and look for a job you do like. €5. What you want to eat?’ ‘Aah… gimme a ham and cheese and tomato sandwich. No, a sub. A sub, please.’”

Now Julie is at the front of the line.  Somehow she is given just the advise she needs.

The advise given was funny and shrewd, kindly meant.

“‘My wife’s a bitch. What’m I goin’ to do about it?’ This was a cocky voice, his friends egging him on. ‘Go and ask her forgiveness for your own shortcomings. That’s €8. What you wanna eat?’ ‘Hey, I thought it was five euros a sandwich!’ ‘Sandwiches are free – read the signs. Advice starts at five euros and goes up from there. You got the eight euros?’

“‘What’s the best sandwich for someone who loves cats?’ ‘A shared sandwich. That’s €5. What you want?’ ‘Oh? Emm… chicken, some salt, light mayo.’ ‘On plain?’ ‘Plain.’‘Chicken, some salt, 

"Summary Literary Bio

Joint winner of the 2009 Best Start Short Story Competition in Glimmertrain.

Shortlisted for the Sean O’Faolain International Short Story Prize, 2010.

In 2011, shortlisted for the RTE Francis MacManus Award for radio stories, and won the Sean O’Faolain International Short Story Prize.

In 2012 shortlisted for the Hennessy New Irish Writing Award and the Fish Short Story prize.

In 2013 was longlisted for Over the Edge New Writer of the Year, and in 2014 for the Hennessy New Irish Writing Award.

Radio play This Time it?s Different, was broadcast on 95fm as part of the Limerick City of Culture program, 2014.

In autumn 2014, he was one of eight International Writers in Residence in Tianjin, China.

My story Advice and Sandwiches was included in the 2015 Anthology of Hennessy New Irish Writing, which was published by New Island.

My collection of short stories titled People in My Brain published in November 2019.

Writer in Residence in Split, Croatia for month of November 2022."

From https://patoconnorwriter.com/

Until August- A Novel by Gabriel Garcia Marquez - first published 2004 - translated by Anne McLean

Gabriel  Garcia Marquez  won the Nobel Prize in 1982. Among his most famous works are One Hundred Years of Solitude and Love in the Time of Cholera

Until August tells the story of Ana Magdalena Bach, a 46-year-old woman who leads a seemingly happy life with her husband and children. However, every year on August 16th, she travels to the island where her mother is buried and indulges in a one-night stand with a different man.

The novel explores themes of female desire, marital routine, and the search for meaning in life. It is a relatively short work, but it has been praised for its evocative prose and its complex portrayal of its central character. 

Until August" was originally intended to be a collection of four stories.

Márquez reportedly began working on the novel as early as 1997.

 

"A Love Letter in the Midsummer" A Short Story by Danny Denton -included with Cork Stories - Edited by Madeleine D’Arcy & Laura McKenna - 2024 - An Irish Short Story Month Work

 

Irish Short Story Month XIII 
March and April - 2024

A Love Letter in the Midsummer" A Short Story by Danny Denton -included with Cork Stories - Edited by Madeleine D’Arcy & Laura McKenna - 2024 - An Irish Short Story Month Work

Today's story by Danny Denton, a lecturer in creative writing at Cork University, is a delightful six page story within a story.

"That midsummer she wrote him a love letter from Leenane. But it was not exactly a love letter, more a sort of teleplay about King Kong and Godzilla sharing an apartment off Douglas Street, long after their various escapades in Japan and New York and across the world’s oceans. He’d kept the letter in his back pocket all evening, and when at last the pub was swept clean and wiped down and locked up, he walked along by Sullivan’s Quay and stopped on a riverside bench there. Taking out the letter, he felt that heavy compression of expectation in his chest. ...

Morning in the apartment. King Kong poked his dishevelled head out of the bedroom doorframe, taking in the scope of the kitchen and living area. ‘You cleaned up,’ Kong said. ‘Sorry.’ Godzilla sat at the table, browsing away on his laptop, his cup of tea to one side. ‘You’re grand,’ he consoled, not for the first time. Kong crossed to the kitchen on shaky legs and began the ritual of going through the cupboards, hanging out of them and grumbling, looking perhaps for something that wasn’t there. ‘How bad was it?’ he eventually asked. "

I really enjoyed this story.

Danny Denton is an Irish novelist, the editor of The Stinging Fly and a lecturer in creative writing at University College Cork. His first novel, The Earlie King & The Kid In Yellow, was published by Granta Books in 2018, and nominated for 'Newcomer of the Year' at the Irish Book Awards. Among other publications, Denton's work has appeared in The Stinging Fly, Southword, Granta, Winter Papers, The Dublin Review, Guardian, Irish Times and Big Issue.

Whether you are just getting started in Irish Short Stories or have been and avid reader for fifty years, Cook Stories, published by Doire Press, will delight you with 18 Stories.

The best way to purchase this marvelous collection  is via the Publisher Doire Press 

https://www.doirepress.com

Start-up Nation: The Story of Israel's Economic Miracle - 2009 - by Dan Senor and Saul Singer

 

Start-up Nation: The Story of Israel's Economic Miracle - 2009 - by Dan Senor and Saul Singer

"How has a small nation of 9 million people, forced to fight for its existence and security since its founding and riven by ethnic, religious, and economic divides, proven resistant to so many of the societal ills plaguing other wealthy democracies?

Why do Israelis have among the world’s highest life expectancies and lowest rates of “deaths of despair” from suicide and substance abuse? Why is Israel’s population young and growing while all other wealthy democracies are aging and shrinking? How can it be that Israel, according to a United Nations ranking, is the fourth happiest nation in the world? Why do Israelis tend to look to the future with determination and purpose while the rest of the West struggles with an epidemic of loneliness, teen depression, and social decline?nture capital investment as the US and thirty times more than Europe?" from dansenor.com

The central question of the book is: How is it that Israel, a country of only 7.1 million people, has been able to produce more start-up companies than much larger and more stable nations? The authors attribute Israel's success to a unique combination of factors, including:

A culture of immigration and immigration that brings together people from diverse backgrounds and skillsets.

A mandatory military service that instills discipline, teamwork, and leadership skills in young Israelis.

A strong emphasis on education and research and development.

A government that is willing to take risks and support innovation.

A close relationship between the Israeli military and the private sector, which has led to the development of many new technologies.

Saul Singer is coauthor of the bestselling book Start-Up Nation: The Story of Israel’s Economic Miracle. He is a former editor and columnist at the Jerusalem Post and has written for The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, and other publications. Singer has given keynote speeches at innovation conferences around the world including Beijing, Sydney, Singapore, London, Madrid, Amsterdam, Oslo, Nairobi, and Sao Paulo. Before moving to Israel in 1994, he served for ten years as an advisor to US Members of Congress. He lives in Jerusalem with his wife and three children.

Daniel Samuel Senor (/ˈsiːnər/; born November 6, 1971) is an American Canadian columnist, writer, and political adviser. He was chief spokesman for the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq and senior foreign policy adviser to U.S. presidential candidate Mitt Romney during the 2012 election campaign. A frequent news commentator and contributor to The Wall Street Journal, he is co-author of the book Start-up Nation: The Story of Israel's Economic Miracle (2009) and The Genius of Israel: The Surprising Resilience of a Divided Nation in a Turbulent World (2023). 

The Covenent of Water - A Novel by Abraham Verghese- 2023 - 720 Pages - An Oprah Book Club Selection

 

The Covenent of Water - A Novel by Abraham Verghese- 2023 - 720 Pages - An Oprah Book Club Selection

When I watched Oprah Winfrey's six minute presentation on her 101th book club selection I at once added it to my read very soon list.

Now I must thank Oprah for her brilliant remarks and Doctor Abraham Verghese for the ten years it took to write one of the very greatest novels I have ever read in the sixty plus years of my reading life.

The Covenent of Water centers on a family grappling with a strange curse:  at least one member in each generation seems destined to die by drowning.  This is particularly poignant considering their life unfolds in Kerala, a land defined by its backwaters, rivers, and Arabian Sea coast.

The narrative starts with a young girl, Mariamma, who is sent by boat for an arranged marriage to a much older widower.  Over time, Mariamma transforms into the family matriarch, overseeing a vast estate and earning the title "Big Ammachi."   The story then unfolds through the lives of her descendants, including a celebrated writer son and future generations who become physicians.

"The Covenant of Water is the long-awaited new novel by Abraham Verghese, the author of Cutting for Stone. Published in 2009, Cutting for Stone became a literary phenomenon, selling over 1.5 million copies in the United States alone and remaining on the New York Times bestseller list for over two years.

Spanning the years 1900 to 1977, The Covenant of Water is set in Kerala, on South India’s Malabar Coast, and follows three generations of a family that suffers a peculiar affliction: in every generation, at least one person dies by drowning—and in Kerala, water is everywhere. The family is part of a Christian community that traces itself to the time of the apostles, but times are shifting, and the matriarch of this family, known as Big Ammachi—literally “Big Mother”—will witness unthinkable changes at home and at large over the span of her extraordinary life. All of Verghese’s great gifts are on display in this new work: there are astonishing scenes of medical ingenuity, fantastic moments of humor, a surprising and deeply moving story, and characters imbued with the essence of life.

A shimmering evocation of a lost India and of the passage of time itself, The Covenant of Water is a hymn to progress in medicine and to human understanding, and a humbling testament to the hardships undergone by past generations for the sake of those alive today. It is one of the most masterful literary novels published in recent" From Grove Press

Abraham Verghese, MD, MACP, is Professor and Linda R. Meier and Joan F. Lane Provostial Professor, and Vice Chair for the Theory and Practice of Medicine at the School of Medicine at Stanford University. He is also a best-selling author and a physician with a reputation for his focus on healing in an era where technology often overwhelms the human side of medicine. He received the Heinz Award in 2014 and was awarded the National Humanities Medal, presented by President Barack Obama, in 2015. 

Further biographical data is available on the Author’s website 

https://www.abrahamverghese.org