Marching With Caesar: Civil War by R. W. Peake

Marching With Caesar: Civil War by R. W. Peake (2012, 540 pages, 1959 KB)

Orangeberry Book Tours – Marching With Caesar: Civil War by RW Peake

Marching With Caesar: Civil War by R. W. Peake is the second book in the critically acclaimed Marching With Caesar Series.   Lots of things happen in this fascinating historical well researched novel.  The central character, Titus Pullus, is part of Julius Caesar's Tenth Legion.   The Tenth Legion played a central role in Roman history as they were the muscle behind Caesar's conversion of Rome from a Republic to an Empire.  Titus serves in Spain, he fights in the crucial battle of Pharsalus that ended the war of the  First Triumvirate and in a perhaps even more dangerous venue he learns to deal with the treachery of Roman politics.   The novel shows very well Titus' relationships with his fellow soldiers and his superiors and gives a good feel for what life in the Roman army was like for the ordinary person.  We also see how his long terms of services impacted his family.   

I found this novel to be an exciting and interesting work.  I was in sympathy with the main characters while seeing their flaws and the brutal world of which they were a part.  

Buy Now @ Amazon

Genre – Historical Fiction

Rating – PG13

Connect with RW Peake on Facebook & Twitter

Blog http://blog.rwpeake.com/

"An Honest Exit" by Dinaw Mengestu Project 196 Ethiopia

"An Honest Exit" by Dinaw Mengestu  (2010, 18 pages)

Ethiopia

Project 196

Country 15 of 196

Dinaw Mengestu

1. Georgia 
2. Canada
3. U. S. A.
4. The Republic of Korea
5. Antigua and Barbuda 
6. Haiti
7. Trinidad and Tobago 
8. Ukraine
9. Cameroon
10. Botswana
11. Sudan
12. Dominica 
13. Israel
14. Syria
15. Ethiopia

If you are a publisher that has an anthology that is done in the 196 spirit, please contact me as I will be spotlighting appropriate collections.  

At first I thought I was setting myself an impossible task but a bit of research has made me optimistic  that I can find a short story from all 196 countries in the world.   I feel this part of the project will be completed.   I also hope to publish a contemporary short story from an author from all 196 countries and I know this is a crazy idea.

If you are Ethiopian and are interested in having one of your short stories read by my readers, please contact me.

Located in the Horn of Africa, Ethiopia has a population of 92,000,000.  I found it interesting to learn it was the most populous landlocked country in the world.   Ethiopia is a multicultural and lingual country.  The majority of the population are Christians, one third Muslim.  The remaining practice a wide variety of religions.  There was once a sizable population of Jews in Ethiopia but they have almost all now migrated to Israel.  Ethiopia was not colonized by a European power until 1936, when, in an incredibly cowardly disgraceful action, the Italians attacked the country and converted it to a colony.   In 1941 when the British drove the Italians out of the country Emperor Haile Selassie re-entered Addis Ababa and returned to the throne.    Ethiopia has played an important part on the world historical stage since very ancient times.  (There is an excellent article on the history of the country here.)    

"An Honest Exit" by Dinaw Mengestu (1978, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia) was first published in The New Yorker.  I read it in the anthology 20 Under 40:  Stories From the New Yorker (2010).   The story is told in the first person by a professor of English whose father fled Ethiopia for America.  The teacher is sees the irony in his teaching English literature and composition to young Americans.  He seems a decent enough teacher but his connection to his students has always been just professional.  Then one day he begins to tell his students the story of how his father left Ethiopia for Sudan and ended up years later in America.  

The old fashioned device of a story within a story is perfectly done here.  The professor's telling of this story kept his students very interested, they now saw him as a real person, not just a teacher.  I found the details of  the life of an Ethiopia refugee in Sudan and his father's eventual escape from the country totally fascinating and very edifying.   Mengestu made the father's experiences very real for his readers. 

Author Data


Dinaw Mengestu is the author of The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears, a Los Angeles Timesbestseller and Seattle Reads pick of 2008, as well as the forthcoming novel How To Read the Air. He was born in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, in 1978. In 1980, he immigrated to the United States with his mother and sister, joining his father, who had fled Ethiopia during the Red Terror. He is a graduate of Georgetown University and Columbia University’s MFA program in fiction and the recipient of a 2006 fellowship in fiction from the New York Foundation for the Arts and a 5 Under 35 Award from the National Book Foundation in 2007. He has written for Rolling Stone andHarper's, among other publications. He lives in New York City.

"Tigers on the Tenth Day" by Zakaria Tamer Project 196 Syria

"Tigers on the Tenth Day" by Zakaria Tamer (1967, 5 pages)

Project 196
Syria

In Support Freedom for  the People of Syria

Country 14 of 196
Zakaria Tamer

1. Georgia 
2. Canada
3. U. S. A.
4. The Republic of Korea
5. Antigua and Barbuda 
6. Haiti
7. Trinidad and Tobago 
8. Ukraine
9. Cameroon
10. Botswana
11. Sudan
12. Dominica 
13. Israel
14. Syria

"On the ninth day, the tamer came carrying a bag of hay, and threw it towards the tiger.

“Eat,” he said.
“What is this?” asked the tiger. “I eat meat.”
“From now on, you’ll eat nothing but hay,” said the tamer.
And when the tiger’s hunger grew, he tried to eat the hay. He was shocked by the taste and backed away in disgust. But he went back, and gradually became accustomed to it.
And on the tenth day, the tamer, his students, the tiger and his cage disappeared, and the tiger became a citizen, and his cage a city."

f you are an author and want to represent your country, please contact me.  If you want to do a guest post on your favorite story for the feature please contact me also.

If you are a publisher that has an anthology that is done in the 196 spirit, please contact me as I will be spotlighting appropriate collections.  

At first I thought I was setting myself an impossible task but a bit of research has made me optimistic  that I can find a short story from all 196 countries in the world.   I feel this part of the project will be completed.   I also hope to publish a contemporary short story from an author from all 196 countries and I know this is a crazy idea.

For the last two years there has been a very bloody civil war raging in Syria.  The United Nations estimates over 60,000 people have been killed and over 500,000 have fled the country.   The battle is between opponents of the current dictatorial government and government troops and backers.    Some analysts see a long nightmarish future for Syria with an extended period of chaos and terrible suffering for ordinary citizens.  Even if the government steps down, unlikely, there a power vacuum will exist in which small war lords will rule the country.  Syria, for a long time a French colony, became independent in 1946.  The national language is Arabic.  The historical roots of Syria date back to the origins of civilization.   

Yesterday I posted on a short story by an author from Israel, Amos Oz.  One of the cornerstones of Syria government policy for the last 50 years has been opposition to Israel based on a deep hatred.  In every encounter, the Syrians have been badly beaten.  

"Tigers on the Tenth Day" by Zakaria Tamer (1931, Damascus, Syria) is a beautiful short story, more parable than story, about the ways politicians use misery  to control their citizens.  I think George Orwell would have liked this story.  (There will be a link at the end of the post where you can read it online, in English or Arabic.)   There are only two characters in this story, a magnificent tiger in a cage and a tiger trainer.  The story begins with a quote right from the playbook of any petty or grande dictator the world has known since the days of Babylon.

"The forests had forsaken the tiger, imprisoned in his cage, but he could not forget them. He glared hatefully at the men beyond the bars; their eyes, curious and unafraid, studied him. One of them spoke in a calm, authoritative tone: “If you truly want to do what I do, to become a tamer, you must never for a moment forget that your adversary’s stomach is your primary target. You will see that this profession is both easy and difficult at the same time. Look at this tiger: he is fierce, arrogant, proud of his freedom, his power and his strength. But he will change, become meek, gentle, and obedient–like a small child. Watch what happens between he who holds the food and he who does not, and learn.”

On the first day when told he will not be given food until he learns to obey, the tiger roars out that he is a proud tiger and will not submit.  The tamer tells him he once was a tiger, now he is an animal in a cage.  On the second day the tamer tells him to just admit he is hungry and he will be fed.  The tiger thinks to himself, well I am hungry and what can this hurt.  Everyday the tiger has to accept a future act of degradation. .    On the last day he is required to bray like a donkey and now he is no longer a tiger and the tamer releases him.  He eats hay and he starts to like it.  His cage is the city.

Author Data

Born in Damascus in 1931, Zakaria Tamer lived in its traditional working class neighborhoods, where he worked from a young age in blacksmithing and hand crafts, through which he came to know his society and people, the circumstances of their lives and their varied mentalities.

In 1957, he decided to enter the world of writing and chose short stories as his literary genre.

From 1960 until 1978, and between 1994 and 2005, several collections of Tamer’s short stories were published, including the “Neighing of the White Horse”, “A Spring in the Ashes”, “Thunder”, “Damascus of the Fires”, “The Tigers in the Tenth Day”, “Noah’s Calling”, “We will Laugh”, “Sour Grapes”, “Knee Busting”, and “The Hedgehog”. In addition, he published children’s stories, most notably “Why the River went Silent” and “The Rose said to the Sparrow”.

Most of Tamer’s stories dealt with social and political (and humanitarian) issues of relevance to both the Syrian and Arab realities in a breathtaking narrative style, a sarcastic language, an amazing stock of imagination, and without imitation.   He has lived for many years in Oxford.  


Here is what he has said about the Syria Revolution

Z.T:     My answer to this question might sound contradicting, for the Syrian revolution surprised me, but it did not at the same time. This contradiction is due to my belief in the non-existence of a Syrian citizen that supports this brutal regime. However every Syrian citizen has a dual personality, one a covert personality that hates the dominant regime blindly, despises it and wishes its swift demise, and the other personality is overt, publicly supporting the regime, heaping praise on it and obeying all its directives. The Syrian revolution was successful in uniting both personalities in one extremely solid individual, ready to die for what he/she believes in, and has no demand but freedom and salvation from tyranny. It is for sure that my relationship with Syria will witness some invisible change after the Syrian people, with all their sacrifices, proved that they are paranormal people, which an innovator would not be blamed for being proud of belonging to.

This is from a fascinating interview with Tamer Here.   The web page is a very good source of information on Syria and the revolution.

"Tigers on the Tenth Day" is about more than just politics.  Long ago I once worked for a giant corporation, owned by incredibly rich people.  I once heard one of them say that recessions are good as they make the employees easier to control.  

Tigers on the Tenth Day can be read here

This was the first story I have ever read by an author from Syria.  It is totally worth reading.   I will seek out more stories by Tamer.


Mel u

Amos Oz Two New Yorker Short Stories Project 196 Isreal

"Waiting" (2008, 5 pages)
"Heirs" (2007, 6 pages)

Project 196

Country 13 of 196
Israel
Amos Oz

1. Georgia 
2. Canada
3. U. S. A.
4. The Republic of Korea
5. Antigua and Barbuda 
6. Haiti
7. Trinidad and Tobago 
8. Ukraine
9. Cameroon
10. Botswana
11. Sudan
12. Dominica 
13. Israel

f you are an author and want to represent your country, please contact me.  If you want to do a guest post on your favorite story for the feature please contact me also.

If you are a publisher that has an anthology that is done in the 196 spirit, please contact me as I will be spotlighting appropriate collections.  

At first I thought I was setting myself an impossible task but a bit of research has made me optimistic  that I can find a short story from all 196 countries in the world.   I feel this part of the project will be completed.   I also hope to publish a contemporary short story from an author from all 196 countries and I know this is a crazy idea.

Yesterday I was looking at the year end best reads post on Parrish Lantern, a great blog I have been following for a long time, and when I read the glowing comments on a short story collection by Amos Oz, a very highly regarded Israeli writer, I decided that if I could find one of his short stories online then I would post on his work for the Israeli story for Project 196.  I was happy to discover that The New Yorker has two of his short stories in their free to the public archives.  As much as I can I am trying to post on short stories that can be read online.  (I will provide links at the end of my post.)

The stories are both set in a small town or village in Israel, they are about the same length,  both written originally in Hebrew and both center on a strange unresolved event that interrupts the routines of people with seemingly normal well arranged lives.  The central figure is left confused and in a state of anxiety about what will happen next.  The stories end with the central characters waiting to have their lives changed.


"Waiting" centers on the life of a government administrator and his school teacher wife.  They have twin daughters.  The only person on stage in the story in the husband.   They first meet in college.   Their lives are well ordered and, they have their issues like most of us do, but basically they seem happy enough.  Then one day his wife, very much a routinized woman, is late getting home from school.  Oz does a wonderful job of building the anxiety in the mind of the low key husband.  For sure I felt I was being shown something real in this perfectly narrated tale.  

"Heir" is the stranger story of the pair, I cannot really say which one I like best.  The central figure in this story is a man in at least late middle age.  His wife of decades left him with little or no explanation and moved to California.   He sold his marital house and now lives with his ninety year old mother, in need of regular care.  One day a stranger arrives.  At first the man tells him he does not buy from door to door salesmen but the man says he is there on a matter of business that will be personally important to him.   He is very vague as to what he is talking about.   He seems to represent someone or other but he does not really let on why he is there at all openly.  He seems to know more than he should about the man and his family.  What happens at the end of the story is very strange,on the surface it makes little sense and it certainly raises many more questions than it answers.

Both of these stories are totally worth reading.   

"Waiting" can be read here

"Heir" can be read here.

Author Data

Amos Oz (Hebrew: עמוס עוז) (born May 4, 1939, birth name Amos Klausner) is an Israeli writer, novelist, and journalist. He is also a professor of literature at Ben-Gurion University in Beersheba. Since 1967, he has been a prominent advocate and major cultural voice of a two-state solution to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. Oz's work has been published in some 41 languages, including Arabic in 35 countries. He has received many honours and awards, among them the Legion of Honour of France, the Goethe Prize, the Prince of Asturias Award in Literature, the Heinrich Heine Prize and the Israel Prize. In 2007, a selection from the Chinese translation of A Tale of Love and Darkness was the first work of modern Hebrew literature to appear in an official Chinese textbook.


Israel, with a population of 7.5 million was created as a Jewish state by United Nations mandate in 1948.  It is surrounded by enemies.  

The Unquiet Grave by Cyril Connolly

The Unquiet Grave:  A Word Cycle by Palinurus by Cyril Connolly (1944, 160 pages)

"Perfect taste always implies an insolent dismissal of other people's."

I first read The Unquiet Grave:  A Word Cycle by Palinurus by Cyril Connolly (1903 to 1974-UK) when I was around 15, numerous decades ago.   I somehow stumbled upon it in the library in a time long before the internet or Amazon so I had no idea what it was about.  No one suggested I read it I just did.   I remember being amazed.  I was a very bookish  young man who sought escape from a world I did not much fit in or like, in reading.  (My guess, accept for the word "young" is this is how my wife sometimes describes me to her friends.)  Nobody I knew, not teachers, family or classmates, loved reading as much as I did.  My parents were very smart but they saw my reading so much as almost a problem of some sort, one they did not understand.    I knew there had to be others out there in the great world who felt as I did and that is why, I think, I was so crazy for The Unquiet Grave:  A Word Cycle by Palinurus.  Connolly, obviously brilliant, incredibly cultured and very much a man of the world, loved literature and put it above all else.   He talked of numerous books I had never heard about, he said there was nothing in the world above great literature.  I was amazed by how much he knew, and not just about books.  I knew I was not alone.  

I recently read Book by Book:  Notes on Reading and Life by Michael Dirda (post coming soon).  He is one of the most popular and highest thought of American literary critics.   He referenced The Unquiet Grave:  A Word Cycle by Palinurus  as one of the books that inspired his life time of reading.   This was my trigger to read once again  The Unquiet Grave:  A Word Cycle by Palinurus.  I am very glad I did.  Now it does seem  a very self indulgent (it was written during a terrible war) book with as much twaddle in it as genius but the genius is still there and enough to make the book must reading for anyone into the reading life. There are several pages of quotes in French (can be annoying to those who don't read it), Connolly very into Flaubert, Proust and other French masters, there is some flat out nuts advise on marriage (three for Connolly), a love for drink and cigars (I am betting he did not have many fully sober days), a fondness for herbal narcotics, and some sophomoric comments on women but there are also some of the best things every said about why literature is so powerful, why it is necessary for civilization.  

Connolly was considered snobbish, elitist, sexist, and arrogant by those who knew him (Wikipedia has a good detailed article on his life and work-he knew much of the English literary elite of the period) and this comes across loud and clear in The Unquiet Grave:  A Word Cycle by Palinurus.  He, I think, loved to say things that would shock people and probably enjoyed showing off how smart and educated he was.  One of his most famous pronouncements  (there is a quality of Orphic obscurity in his work)  was

‎"The more books we read, the clearer it becomes that the true function of a writer is to produce a masterpiece and that no other task is of consequence." 

I don't agree with this and I think it was said for effect as Connolly admitted elsewhere he never lived up to his potential.  But it does make you think.  Here are a few other marvelous quotes from the book:

‎"There is no pain in life equal to that which two lovers can inflict on each other"

"When I contemplate the accumulation of guilt and remorse which, like a garbage-can, I carry through life, and which is fed not only by the lightest actions, but by the most harmless pleasure, I feel man to be of all living things the most biologically incompetent and ill-organized."

Beneath a mask of selfish tranquility nothing exists except bitterness and boredom. I am one of those whom suffering has made empty and frivolous: each night in my dreams I pull the scab off a wound; each day, vacuous and habit-ridden, I help it re-form."

"'Dry again?' said the Crab to the Rock-Pool. 'So would you be,' replied the Rock-Pool, 'if you had to satisfy, twice a day, the insatiable sea."

"Morning tears return; spirits at their lowest ebb. Approaching forty, sense of total failure; not a writer but a ham actor whose performance is clotted with egotism; dust and ashes; 'brilliant'. - that is not worth doing. Never will I make that extra effort to live according to reality which alone makes good writing possible: hence the manic-depressiveness of my style,—which is either bright, cruel and superficial; or pessimistic; moth-eaten with self-pity"

"Life is a maze in which we take the wrong turning before we have learnt to walk."


"Imprisoned in every fat man a thin one is wildly signalling to be let out."

Palinurus was the was the pilot on Aeneas's ship, he fell overboard in an act of atonement angry gods and wandered the underworld.  

He admires the work of Thomas de Qunincy, Blaise Bascal, Nicholas Comfort and Proust.  In a perhaps mark of the times he quotes Freud a good bit.  He also greatly admired the maxims of La Rochefoucauld and as a direct result of this Connolly is still directing my reading as I have started reading an edition of the maxims now.  I see also I need badly to reread Flaubert, this time in the Lydia Davis translation, and Proust.  

I think Connolly's ideal reader might be a very bookish, isolated impressionable adolescent.  If you are 13 and love reading and no one you know really does, read this book. Then read for at least two decades then read it again then maybe once more in five decades.   Or if that was you several decades ago, try it now.  Some readers will find it too elitist, be offended by the snobbery which is there, be bored by the long quotes in languages they cannot read, see his remarks on women as near silly,  see Connolly as showing off a bit (OK at times more than a bit) and will not agree that only the greatest of literature is worth reading.  If he lived today I could see him publishing a long article in the Manchester Guardian saying the Harry Potter books were totally trash and I really like them. 

I would suggest everyone very into the reading life try this book. See of you can get a library copy or download a sample from Amazon before you buy it.    You might be bored by it or find the genius to twaddle ratio (which I put at 50/50)  weighted more to twaddle and I would respect that judgement.  You might see his sage advise on women (there is no advise on men for women in it) pushing the stupid.  Some of the things he said will outrage you but they will make you think.  Some of the things are totally brilliant.  One line I recalled exactly from 50 years ago was about how a face  of a stranger seen in a subway train can disturb us for weeks.  I hope I will always remember this and have the power to be disturbed by the face of a stranger.  For sure you will add some great books to your to be read list. I still find his literary taste impeccable.   He loved Joyce and Swift so he gives proper respect to the Irish.  

Mel u

Safe as Houses by Marie-Helene Bertino

Safe as Houses by Marie-Helene Bertino (2012, 164 pages)

Safe as Houses by Marie-Helene Bertino (Brooklyn, New York State, USA) won the   Iowa Short Fiction Award for her debut collection of short fiction.  I really really enjoyed this collection!  It was so creative, laugh out loud funny over some terribly sad things, beautifully written with real wisdom about lost lives, isolates.

 I do not especially like posts on anthologies of short stories that just rave on about them in general.  When I visit a forest I do not just like to see the trees, I like to see the moss that grows on them, the vines that climb them and listen to the birds that make them their home.  I like to peel the bark from the trees to see the insects that bore into the trees, I like to study their roots. Sometimes I like to climb to the top of the trees and survey the environment,  once in a rare while I build a tree house and stay a while.  That is just what this collection motivated me to do.    As you read Safe as Houses be sure to be on the watch for feral pigs roaming the forest, especially the ones that  quote Ovid in Latin, and for sure don't say anything about free ham to them.  

I will post on most of her stories, my normal procedure and then generalize as to why I like it and who should read it.  I will probably never post on a whole anthology of short stories if I do not at least like it a good bit.  


"Free Ham"

"Growing up, I have dreams that my father sets our house on fire.  When our house actually does catch on fire, my first thought is Get the Dog Out"

"Free Ham", the lead story, really made me smile at the wonderful strange wackiness of it.  I laughed out loud when I met the father in the story.  I have to quote another line of a conversation the narrator has with a firefighter the  first time their house burnt down:  "The firefighter begins.  "Who was in the house?" We answer as a family  " We were".  "Are you still inside the house?"  "No", we say.  "We're here now".   I really am inclined to rave on to the point where no one will believe me when I say this story beautifully captures the feel of living in a totally absurd culture, a place where there is no unspeakable stupidity.   I thought the best part of this story was when she went to visit her father.  Her parents are no longer together.  The man is obsessed with dogs, he has pictures of them all over his place.  When the girl presents him with a real dog if you don't at least smile, have your pulse checked.  This is a subversively  funny, never mean spirited gentle tale about trying to cope with the absurdities of life.  This story reminded me of Kenzaburo Oe's very early masterpiece, "When He Himself Shall Wipe Away My Tears".  There is also a lot of fun strange plot action about some issues over a free ham that nobody seems to want.

"The Idea of Marcel"  

"In Wise Love each divines the high secret self of the other, and refusing to believe in the mere daily self, creates a mirror where the lover or the beloved sees an image to copy in daily life"-W. B.Yeats

"The Idea of Marcel" is a very creative  story perfectly developed. It is a kind of coda to the Yeats quote above.   Emily broke up with Marcel three months ago.  She has arranged to meet her date for the evening at a cafe Marcel liked.   The Marcel shows up but it is not the real Marcel, it is her ideal Marcel, Marcel at his best.  As I read this I could not help but imagine my wife having a dinner out with the ideal Mel.  One who listens sympathetically to her account of the inevitable problems of raising three teenage daughters and offers intelligent suggestions or is it the one who says, "I don't know, you handle it".   Then Emily see another Marcel having lunch with another Emily.  Only it is one who hangs on his every word, is a bit fitter, laughs at all his jokes and never presents him with a problem.  To make it a bit worse, the other Emily is better looking.  Emily begins to wonder why she could not accept the real Marcel and comes to hate the ideal Emily.  This is a very perceptive story of what happens in relationships when the people in them do not live up to their best side.  It is very funny and there is lots of great plot action.

"North Of"

Guess who is coming for Thanksgiving dinner with you, your Mom and your brother getting ready to ship out to join the American expeditionary forces in Iraq?  It is the ultimate counter-culture icon of the American 1960s, Bob Dylan.    This is an odd story, Bob Dylan is just kind of there for people to react to him and try to figure out who the now elderly man is.   There are  just three people at the dinner, besides Bob, the 15 years a widow mom, her daughter who now lives and works in New York City, where she somehow met Bob Dylan and the youngest one in the family, the brother getting read to ship to Iraq.   He is very into the USA government view that the troops in Iraq are doing something wonderful for the country, just the sort of view that Bob Dylan defied during the Vietnam war.  I am taking it also that the fact that the brother is going to Iraq to fight is  a mark of lower-middle class origins.   He does not quite know what Bob Dylan represents but he knows he does not like him.   The mother invites Bob to pray before the meal then on learning he is Jewish asks "do Jews pray?"   The mother inadvertently elbows Bob in the mouth, he gets taken to a local market where someone asks him, seriously, if he is Vincent Price.  This is a funny imaginative story that makes very off beat use of a towering cultural figure.

"This Is Your Will to Live"

"This salesman came to my house.  He was my age, thirty or so, but seemed to have a better life, a life that lead him into pressed pants and a sharp-looking button-down, or at least a job"

A door to door salesmen plays a big part in one of the most famous short stories by  Flannery O'Connor, one of the many famous graduates of the University of Iowa's Masters in creative writing program.  They were once a stock figure in the American short story, a stranger who brought the outside world to rural isolates, themselves often marginal people, not to be trusted, cousins to the Irish Travelers.  You knew they were sort of like you but that is all.    I really liked this story, it kind of combines the elements of magic realism and southern Gothic.  A salesman shows up and the woman against her better judgement, invites him in to demonstrate his wares without knowing what he is selling.  She is prudent enough to at least ask him if he plans to murder her!   She, obviously lonely, finds out his name and offers him coffee and cookies.   He opens his sales case and something magic happens.  The plot of this story is so well told and so much fun I do not want to spoil it for anyone.   This story left me stupefied. 



"Safe As Houses"

"Safe As Houses", the title story, is my favorite piece in the collection.  The basic idea of it is just so unique and creative I was amazed no one else had ever written this story.  It has been out there waiting to be told for a very long period of time and Bertino has finally done it.  As I was reading this collection I was also reading Book by Book:  Notes on Reading and Life by Michael Dirda.  I was really struck by a quotation from William Pater in which he attempts to  define the critical act:  "What is this song or book, to me?  What effect does it really produce on me?  Does it give me pleasure?  And if so, what sort of degree of pleasure?"   I think the very powerful sense of pleasure this story gave me came firstly just from seeing how flat out brilliant and somehow inevitable this story was.   Somebody should have written this 150 years ago so it could be one of the classics of the short story.  I will just tell you the concept as I do not want to deprive you of the pleasure of reading this story for the first time.  An English professor breaks into people's houses when he thinks they will be gone and he robs them.  Only he does not steal their laptops, the money, jewelry or the normal stuff.  He steals their keepsakes, their treasured family pictures, he slashes with a knife the stuffed animals in their kid's rooms, he smashes up obviously treasured record collections and the sort of art works people bring back from family trips.  If you want to understand why, read this story.  It is a brilliantly, beautifully written (the professor has an accomplice who you will really dislike) it is flat out hilarious and gave me a great deal of pleasure to read.   

There are two more very good short stories in Safe as Houses.  I think Marie-Helene Bertino has the potential to join the ranks of the major contemporary American short story writers. I cannot quite explain why but I think her stories are very American.   The people in her stories are isolates, not dysfunctional but mutli-functional in a time of transition into a yet to be understood landscape.   Her stories cut deep but they do not hurt unless you are already in enough pain that they will make you laugh instead of cry.  Her stories will make you smile and laugh which is enough alone to make me like them, anything else they offer is a bonus.  

Also some may find it of cultural or academic interest to see what sort of short stories are highly regarded at the University of Iowa.  

Author Data

Biography

Marie-Helene Bertino’s debut collection of short stories SAFE AS HOUSES received The 2012 Iowa Short Fiction Award, judged by Jim Shepard, and was published October 1, 2012.  Her stories have appeared or are forthcoming in The Pushcart Prize Anthology XXXIII, North American Review, Mississippi Review, Inkwell, The Indiana Review, American Short Fiction, Five Chapters, West Branch, Electric Literature’s Recommended Reading, Storyville, The Common and Mississippi Review’s 30 (an anthology of 30 years of publishing).  She has been nominated for The Pushcart Prize four times, receiving the award in 2007 and a Special Mention in 2011.  She hails from Philadelphia and lives in Brooklyn, where for six years she was the Associate Editor of One Story.  She has taught for The Gotham Writer’s Workshop and One Story’s Emerging Writer’s Workshop and was an Emerging Writer Fellow at NYC’s Center for Fiction.  She has worked as a muralist, diner waitress, receptionist, music writer, and she currently works as a biographer of people with Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI).  

Check out her Facebook Page

"At least 2013 seems to be starting with
an exciting book" Carmilla

Her webpage is here

There is a really good interview with Marie-Helene Bertino here

Interview has a fascinating interview 

There is an in depth interview on the blog of Rob Mclennan


I look forward to seeing her develop her great talent and reading a lot more of her work.

The Nervous Breakdown has a very creative self-interview


Paris Review Interview -added Jan 16, 2013

My Blogging and Reading Plans for 2013

My blog consists now of about 60 to 70 percent posts on short stories and the rest on novels with a bit of non-fiction.  I expect this to stay pretty much the same in 2013.  My posts on short stories will be organized around my various reading projects.  I hope to publish at least 25 short stories in 2013.

I hope to have 1.5 million page views in 2013.

I am currently reading two classics, Bleak House and A Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man and hope to finish them in January.  I will continue to read contemporary literary fiction, classics,  modern fiction, Asian novels, and lots of short stories.  I will read some non-fiction, biographies, history and literary criticism also.


I hope to discover lots of great new to me writers.

I am open to joint ventures and hope to have more guest posts in 2013.

In March I will host Irish Short Story Week Year Three.

"I'll try to keep things from being too
dull"-Carmilla

I hope to develop more contacts and increase my technical competency.

If you have any suggestions as to how to improve my blog, please let me know.