"Mysteries and Offerings" by Sue Guiney (2015, from Cooked Up Food Fiction From Around the World edited by Elaine Chiew)

Posts On The Work and Novels of Sue Guiney 

"Joy is something we need more of, especially in my country. Sometimes I worry that there is an illness eating away at us, like a disease in the root of a tree. We Cambodians were so strong and proud long ago. Now there is a weakness that we cannot overcome. Not without the help of others. It is a great sadness that we all feel, even though we do not show it. It is there behind our smiles, lurking so close to the surface of our laughter."

I love short stories and food, not necessarily in that order, so I was elated to be given a D R C of a forthcoming very soon anthology devoted to short stories centering on food. I was delighted to see that  Cooked Up Food Fiction From Around the World edited and introduced by Elaine Chiew contains stories  by Rachel Fenton and Sue Guiney.  I have previously posted on two of Rachel Fenton's wonderful short stories and she kindly did a very interesting Q and A session on my blog.  Sue Guiney helped me do something relatively unique of which I am proud.  She conducts for at risk Cambodia children fiction workshops in which participants express themselves in English through stories and poems drawn from their experiences.  (A mastery of English is essential for professional success). I was given the honor of publishing many of these very moving works.  I have also read and posted on two of Sue Guiney's set in Cambodia novels, both of which I highly recommend. I was also happy to see a short story by Krys Lee included, having enjoyed one of her works a while ago.  The diversely selected other contributors all have very interesting bios. I have already posted on Elaine Chiew's story, dealing with Singaporean food culture, "Run of the Molars" and "Food Bank" by Rachel Fenton.

Today I want to spotlight a very good story by Sue Guiney.  She has a vast knowledge and hands on experience of Cambodian culture.  "Mysteries and Offerings" is set in a medical clinic where the poor can go for help.  The medical staff are western volunteers, the staff workers are Cambodians.  Readers of Sue's novels will be, I know I am eagerly looking forward to more of her set in Cambodia books, happy to be back in the clinic.   The clinic has a strong family feel, the doctors are a long way from home and the employees have bonded strongly with them through their work.  The story begins as Christmas Day approaches.  The staff wants to put on a sumptuous Christmas feast for the doctors, of course this is a first experience for the Cambodians. It was great fun to follow the preparation for the dinner.  Guiney does such a great job describing the preparations that I felt I could actually smell the delicious items being prepared.  

I hope to read and post on a few more stories from Cooked Up Food Fiction From Around the World edited by Elaine Chiew in June.  I recommend this anthology to all lovers of the form and if you are a foodie at all, you will love it.

Author Bio

Sue Guiney is an American writer and educator living in London. She has published two poetry collections and three novels and has had work published in literary journals on both sides of the

Atlantic. She was the Writer-in-Residence in the SE Asian Department of the University of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS). Although Sue has written widely on a variety of subjects, most of her work and inspiration now comes from Cambodia. She has founded a creative writing workshop for at-risk children called ‘Writing Through Cambodia’, where she spends several months a year teaching. Sue is writing a series of novels set in modern-day, post-Khmer Rouge Cambodia, the latest of which, Out of the Ruins, was published in 2014.

For sure I hope to feature more of the work of Sue Guiney going forward. 

Mel u

What would you do- Holocaust deniers seek to leave a comment

i have  posted on numerous holocaust related books, fact and fiction on The Reading Life. Today I got a comment saying the German concentration camps were not death camps and Jews were paid for their work.  They referred me to a documentary, on YouTube, called Hellstorm Documentary which is a total attack on the allied war efforts, very anti Jewish and anti Russians.  I posted the comment with a note saying posted in interest of free expression.  Should I have posted it or deleted, the comment was anonymously left?  The documentary makes no mention of the Holocaust or the fact that Germans started the war.

Mel u

Ambrosia Boussweau

"The Blind Kittens" by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa (1961, translated by Stephen Tilley, 2014)

My Post on The Leopard by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa

The Blind Kittens was the first chapter in a never completed second novel.

Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa (1896 to 1957, Sicily) is remembered for his classic novel, The Leopard. Reading this wonderful book is as close as we can get to time-traveling to 19th century Sicily.  His literary output was sadly very small, consisting of his novel and three short works of fiction.  I have previously posted on his magnificent story "The Professor and the Siren" which I totally loved.  "The Blind Kittens" is included in the same collection.  Like all his work, it is set in Sicily.  If you are at all interested in the history of Sicily, you will be fascinated by "The Blind Kittens".

"The Blind Kittens" is about the economic life of Sicily how land ownership and money lending dominated the island.  The influence of Balzac can be strongly felt here.  We see how one family slowly acquired more and more land.  I loved the descriptions of the food. 

"she offered sicilian cuisine raised to another level —to its cube, in fact—in terms of the number of `portions and the abundance of sauces, thus rendering it lethal. The macaroni veritably swam in oil, buried under a mass of caciocavallo cheese; the meats were stuffed with fiery salami; the “trifle-in-a-hurry” contained three times the prescribed amount of liqueur, sugar, and candied fruit. But all this, as previously said, seemed to ferrara exquisite, the pinnacle of cuisine"

Lampedusa's descriptions of life in Sicily are just exquisite.  His work is part of a deeply cultured tradition.  He was an extreme devotee of the reading life.

I highly recommend Marina Warner's introduction to the collection, which can be read online on The Paris Review webpage in a slightly different form.   Warner helped me understand the mythology behind his work. 

http://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2014/08/09/the-professor-and-the-siren/

I hope to reread The Leopard in June.

Mel u

"Drive My Car" by Haruki Murakami (2015, translated by Ted Goossen, in Arrival, edited by John Freeman)

A new anthology of short stories focusing on travel experiences of diverse sorts, Arrival edited by John Freeman contains a number of promising looking essays and short stories.  Upon looking the collection over, I was very happy to see a new, or at least new in English translation, short story by Haruki Murakami.  

"Drive My Car" centers on an actor, a widower in his fifties.  He is mostly a stage actor but has had success as a character actor in the movies and done some TV.  He was married to a beautiful very well regarded actress for twenty years.  She died of overian cancer at forty nine.  He tells the mechanic working in his Saab that he needs a driver.  He likes to rehearse his lines in the car on the way to the theater.  The mechanic recommends a twenty five year old woman for the job of driver.  We learn the tradgedy of the actor's life was the four affairs of his wife.  Their relationship to him always seemed very good and he does not understand her motivation.  The wife never realized he was aware of her affairs. In a conversation with the driver we learn he deliberately set out to become friends with one if the actors involved with his wife in an effort to find a way to take revenge.  

We learn a bit about the driver and more about the actor as they spend time in the car.  "Drive My Car" is a very interested low key story.  I was kindly given a D R C of Arrival and exoect to read more from it.

I hope to soon post on two recently brought back into print very early novels by Murakami, Pinball and   Wind. 

Ambrosia Boussweau 

"Valley of the Girls" by Kelly Link (2011, included in Get in Trouble)

This afternoon I wanted to read a short story by an established writer whose work I have not yet experienced.   My "problem" was I did not know which of the 3000 plus short stories on my E-Reader to read.  I opened more or less at random New American Short Stories edited by Benjamin Marcus and "Valley of the Girls" by Kelly Link came up on the screen.  Problem solved.

"Valley of the Girls" is set in one I would describe as a kind of alternative universe.  It is post 20th century but many of the ideas of Ancient Egypt about the after life, including burial in pyramids and mummification persist.  The teller of the story is a young woman from the upper classes.  There are strange customs, not all real easy to understand.  It seems like the woman may be sealed up alive in a tomb as the story closes but she does not clearly know that.  I really liked this story and hope to read more of the work of Kelly Link.

Kelly Link is the author of the collections Get in Trouble, Stranger Things Happen, Magic for Beginners, and Pretty Monsters. She and Gavin J. Grant have co-edited a number of anthologies, including multiple volumes of The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror and, for young adults, Monstrous Affections. She is the cofounder of Small Beer Press. Her short stories have been published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, The Best American Short Stories, and The O. Henry Prize Stories. She has received a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. Link was born in Miami, Florida. She currently lives with her husband and daughter in Northampton, Massachusetts. from New American Short Stories

Mel u

"A Breath of Lucifer" by R. K. Narayan (1956? First Published in The Hindu Times)

R. K Narayan is one of my favorite writers.  I have read and posted on eleven of his novels and a number of his short stories.  J. K. Lumpari considers him one of the masters of the short story.  Most of his stories are set in the imaginary community of Narayan's creation, Malguidi, India.  Older residents of India may recall the wonderful TV series  based on his stories, Malguidi Days, many can be found on YouTube.  

One of Narayan's evident objectives was to portray people in lots of different jobs.  Today we meet Sam.  He makes his living as an attendant for the sick in hospitals.  He stays full time in a patient's room.  His current client has undergone eye surgery and is eagerly awaiting the removal of coverings over his eyes.  Sam is always talking about his time working as a medical aid in numerousGra military campaigns but he cannot quite recall any exact wars or battles he worked.  He rarely stops talking, complaining about the nurses and second guessing the doctors.  Something very unexpected happens, either the patient has a very vivid dream or Sam without authorization took him outside for a drinking party.  We learn Sam is not a perfect saint, he learned to drink while working for the military, and even though married has a long term acquaintanceship with one of Malguidi's "public women", a euphemism for what it sounds like.

This is for sure a fun story.  There is a magical quality to the prose style of Narayan I cannot quite describe.  I read this in an anthology of his short stories, Grandmother's Tale and other Stories.  It is a good collection though I would suggest you buy first the anthology his  of short stories edited by J. K. Lumpari, Malguidi Days.

"The Burned Sinners and the Harmonius Angels" by Clarice Lispector 1964

My Posts on Clarice Lispector 

The Complete Short Stories of Clarice Lipsector, to be published August, 2015, translated by Katrina Dodson, edited and introduced by Benjamin Moser

"Burned Sinners and the Harmonius"is strikingly different from any of the other stories by Clarice Lispector I have so far read.  In Why This World:  A Biography of Clarice Lispector by Benjamin Moser I learned that this story is her only one written in the form of a play.  Moser says it was written in Switzerland in 1949 but not published until 1964.  Evidently it took her a long time to feel ready to publish it and many journal editors found it strange.  

It reads almost like an ancient liturgical drama or a Greek play  centering on the execution of a woman taken in adultery. I do not know how versed Lispector was in Kabbalistic thought but some of the dialogues of the Angels sounds sourced from there.   It is a deeply felt story about birth, death, guilt, social mores and much more.   It could be set 2000 years ago as their are refrences to what seem the miracles of Jesus and might be reflective of a culture in moral decline, focusing on a woman who committed adultery and not deeper issues.

Thus is a very interesting story and I think it would be very good for class room discussions.

Mel u