Monthly Archives: May 2022

My debut novel, Lonely Are the Brave

19 Thursday May 2022

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I’m delighted to tell you I’ve realized the dream I’ve nurtured for more than a half-century: In April 2023, Cynren Press will publish my novel, Lonely Are the Brave. So, starting next week, in addition to my regular book reviews, I’ll periodically post about the novel’s historical background, with occasional sidelights as to how I incorporated those facts or events into the narrative — or tried to and failed.

But for today, let’s stick with the premise:

In 1919, scandal stirs Lumberton, a small (fictional) logging town amid the evergreens an hour outside Seattle: War hero Rollie Birch, whose wife died while he was overseas, turns at-home father; and Kay Sorensen, the timber baron’s daughter, dares defy her politician husband to pursue a business career.

Almost overnight, Rollie goes from town celebrity to pariah. Nobody will talk to him, gossips snicker that his infant daughter isn’t his, and even his beloved sister wishes he’d give up his crazy idea. Meanwhile, Kay fears her tyrannical husband, running for state legislature, will make her leave the job she loves, and wonders if his bizarre public attacks on Rollie, who served in his platoon during the war, somehow explain what’s gone wrong in her marriage.

Discreetly, she begs Rollie to tell her what her husband did during the war, to which he reluctantly agrees, provided Kay reveal what she knows about his late wife’s possible infidelity.

But trading wartime secrets has unexpected consequences, not least for fragile, lonely hearts and cherished beliefs—and the ensuing public storm threatens to destroy Kay and Rollie both.

……………………….

More to come.

Korean Saga: Beasts of a Little Land

16 Monday May 2022

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Review: Beasts of a Little Land, by Juhea Kim
Ecco, 2021. 399 pp. $27

In 1917, seven years into the Japanese occupation of Korea, a hunter tracks a tiger because its skin is worth a small fortune, and he hopes to save his starving family from death. But he nearly perishes in the snow during the hunt, and again when he runs into a party of Japanese officers intent on bagging a trophy, any trophy. However, when he saves one officer from the tiger — without killing the beast or even holding a weapon — the officer spares his life.

Meanwhile, a woman sells her eleven-year-old daughter, Jade, to a high-class courtesan, who accepts the girl despite her unprepossessing looks and character.

From these two events, whose aftereffects play out over decades, comes a saga about wealth and poverty, freedom and depression, and, perhaps most important, the ability (or lack thereof) to see beneath surfaces or deal with emotional vulnerability — indeed, any emotions at all. Along the way, the novel mirrors the story of Korean independence, emphasizing the twenty years between the tiger hunt and Japan’s invasion of Manchuria in 1937, though the narrative continues to 1965.

Japanese poster or postcard, artist unknown, from the 1930s, which reads, “Japan-Korea. Teamwork and Unity. Champions of the World” (courtesy http://populargusts.blogspot.de/2010/07/ reunification-assimilation-and-three.html, via Wikimedia Commons; public domain)

Besides Jade, her mentor, and the two courtesans-in-training among whom she grows up, there’s an orphan boy who lives in the street, whom Jade befriends, and a couple of businessmen and a writer-turned-politician. Jade crosses paths, and sometimes more, with all of them. Each represents a particular emotional type, whether the violent man who expresses himself through his fists, the blueblood conscious of his rank and importance, and so forth.

I’m not the first critic to point out that Kim’s Japanese officers summon up a stereotype. They’re practically stick figures whose stunted limbs consist of greed, sadism, the conception of honor (read: pride), and utter incomprehension of human feeling. On the surface, they’re almost out of the wartime propaganda film. But Kim has two goals, I think, which grant the portrait a purpose.

First, she’s writing for an audience that might have heard of the atrocities in Nanjing in 1937 and maybe the so-called comfort women conscripted for military brothels, but for whom Japanese brutalities in Asia are largely a blank — and her story begins decades before them, anyway.

Second, the officers’ incapacity to view people, places, or objects from any perspective other than utilitarian extends to many of the Korean characters too, especially the men. But several women buy into this philosophy as well, assuming that once they lose their looks — in their thirties! — they’ve nothing left, and their lives are over. In that way, the Japanese officers’ fatal flaw, lack of heart, is on the same continuum as everyone else’s. As a result, few characters in this novel are happy or even know what that might look like, except possibly in retrospect.

The narrative worldview may take getting used to; so does the prose style. At first, the author’s manner of explaining everything — landscape, actions, feelings — struck me wrong. I admire her writing for its simple elegance, certain passages of which are beautiful without calling attention to themselves, so I wondered why she told everything rather than show it. But I stuck with it, and I think I see what she’s after, a panoramic discourse akin to Tolstoy or, as with the opening scenes depicting the tiger hunt, a legend. See what you make of this typical passage, which parses the thoughts of SungSoo, a businessman, on finding a former lover talking to a onetime friend whom he looks down on, as news of the emperor’s death has reached them:

Once the soju [liquor] had circulated through their bodies, each began to feel more comfortable — not about the emperor’s death, but the situation among themselves. It is always excruciating to discover that one’s distinct connections, who ought to belong firmly and chastely in separate spheres of one’s life, are somehow acquainted, and perhaps more intimately than one would like. Each of them keenly suffered from this, though SungSoo in particular took this as an insult and a betrayal. His good breeding and the soothing effects of soju were the only things that kept him from succumbing to the jealousy that burned deeply in his chest.

You may like this style, or it may feel distant, but if you read Beasts of a Little Land, get used to it. As with many sagas (not my usual fare), the attempt to make everything larger than life can seem stilted, especially when the crossing of paths feels contrived, or scenes unfold according to a predictable pattern. I wish too that Kim or her editor had weeded out phrases like blow off, reach out to, okay with, and playbook, when we’re supposed to be reading about early twentieth-century Korea.

But taken in its entirety, Beasts of a Little Land has something going for it, not least history that may be unfamiliar.

Disclaimer: I obtained my reading copy of this book from the public library.

Unusual Friendship: A Net for Small Fishes

09 Monday May 2022

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Review: A Net for Small Fishes, by Lucy Jago
Flatiron, 2021. 331 pp. $27

London, 1609. Anne Turner, mother of six with a much older husband and heavy debts, looks to increase her income from “fashioning” for wealthy ladies, her sideline in medicinal concoctions being less lucrative. Indeed, it is as a fashion consultant that Katherine, countess of Suffolk, has summoned her to dress her daughter Frances, countess of Essex. Anne’s task: to get Frances out of bed, ready to please her husband, Robert Devereux, the earl of Essex.

But the earl is not easily pleased, even by the most beautiful, vivacious young wife in England. Only an empty-headed bully, coward, and brute with multiple axes to grind could treat Frances Howard so badly she’d refuse to leave her bedchamber. But Essex is all that, and more: He’s impotent and can’t consummate the marriage, which only adds to his shame, prompting him to abuse his nineteen-year-old bride even further.

Moreover, there are politics involved, as always among English aristocrats. Frances Howard is one of those Howards, the family with which Tudor monarchs had to reckon, as do the Stuarts now, in the court of James I. And Essex’s family is the Howard faction’s sworn enemy.

So Mistress Turner, seamstress and herbalist, is sailing in deep, choppy waters, but she’s ambitious. She has claim to social respectability, through this or that marriage or cousin, and she’s always liked finer things, of which she’s had a taste. Consequently, though she resents being ordered about by Frances’s mother, as if she were a servant, the young countess draws her in, and not just as a means for advancement.

Anne Turner, artist unknown, 1615 (courtesy http://www.kateemersonhistoricals.com/TudorWomen5.htm via Wikimedia Commons; public domain)

A most unusual friendship develops, as Frankie, as she’s known to intimates, relies heavily on Anne’s guidance. Impulsive, passionate, and unguarded in tongue, the neophyte noblewoman requires a steadying hand, whereas Anne sees in her protégée a kindly soul craving warmth and protection. To be sure, the commoner also revels in court intrigue and the display of wealth and pomp to which she has access through Frankie.

But Frankie’s no easy charge to look after, and she has dangerous tastes, in particular a deep, powerful attraction to Robert Carr, the king’s favorite. All eyes, and not just those of Frankie’s boorish husband, are watching — and Anne is dragooned into acting as go-between.

The narrative therefore intersects with that of The Poison Bed, Elizabeth Fremantle’s take on the Howard-Carr intrigue. But where Fremantle fixed on the cut-and-thrust of court politics and the tempestuous romance, Jago, though she pays attention to those facets of the story, concentrates on the friendship between the two women. She casts her narrative as a feminist tale, a woman wronged by her beast of a husband; has she really no recourse?

Jago’s authorial hand is remarkably sure, especially in a first novel. From the beginning, the reader will admire the prose, descriptive and emotionally evocative at once, as with this early passage, in which Anne contrives to dress Frances appropriately, yet with an eye to the young woman’s own advantage and image to portray:

My hands darted like a bird pecking seed, working needles and pins, laces and points, circling Frances like a whole flock of maids though I was but one woman. My deftness pleased me, as if the pins and laces grew from my own body as silk comes from the spider. I enjoyed the feel of the sharp metal broaching cloth made on looms in foreign lands, by hands as quick and sure as my own. It pleased me to sculpt fine materials into the shapes in my mind’s eye. To the bodice I tied sleeves, pulling them into sharp peaks above her shoulders. From the shambles of this whipped child rose a castle, every swag and buttress a testament to her worth.

With such keen observation, the novel renders the manner in which the court honors or breaks reputations, and what happens as a result. There are a few decent people about, but they must be watchful, for no one falls faster or harder than the lucky person elevated in esteem, then dropped; and courtiers take delight in revenge, whenever they can. Though court life is a standard in historical fiction portraying this era, I nevertheless note Jago’s persistent eye to the human cost, as with the innocent offspring of the figures cast down.

I’m not sure I find as much meaning in the feminist aspect of Frances Howard’s predicament as Jago intends, maybe because, as the daughter of one earl and wife of another, our countess is hardly representative. (I find more of that thematic substance in Anne’s story.) I see the issues involved with Frances — it’s hard not to — just not the claim of deep significance. I’m also not persuaded of Anne Turner’s venal side, because we’re told it rather than shown.

But all the same, A Net for Small Fishes is a splendid novel, evocative and moving, and I highly recommend it. Few authors can bring off literary thrillers, but Jago does. She’s an author to watch.

Disclaimer: I obtained my reading copy of this book from the publisher through my work for Historical Novels Review, in which this post appeared in shorter, different form.

Tragic Destiny: Four Treasures of the Sky

02 Monday May 2022

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Review: Four Treasures of the Sky, by Jenny Tinghui Zhang
Flatiron, 2022. 336 pp. $28

The first, arresting sentence of this utterly compelling novel refers to a kidnapping, but the story’s much larger than a single person. It’s a tale of good versus evil, mostly the latter.

Despite being named for a tragic heroine of legend, Daiyu has a happy childhood in 1880s China. Growing up in a fishing village six days from the port of Zhifu, she has firm but doting parents who teach her to love nature and respect others, and to expect such respect in return. With that nurturance to guide Daiyu, life holds great promise:

Our village sat next to a river that fed the ocean and in those early years, I walked along the riverbank often, following the black-tailed gulls until I reached the ocean’s mouth. I hugged the water’s edge, counting the riches that it held: life, memory, even doom. My mother spoke of the sea with romance, my father with reverence, my grandmother with caution. I felt none of those things. Standing beneath the gulls and swifts and terns, I only felt myself, one who held nothing, carried nothing, and offered nothing. I was simply beginning.

Unbeknownst to Daiyu, these are dangerous times, and one day, her parents flee without warning, leaving her in her grandmother’s care. Soldiers come looking for the fugitives, which bewilders Daiyu; what could her parents have done wrong? And soon, it’s too dangerous for Daiyu to live in the village, whereupon she’s sent to fend for herself in Zhifu.

Perhaps that seems improbable, but what follows is all too nightmarishly real. For a while, she finds comfort and stimulation as a servant at a calligraphy school, and in learning that art, she learns about life. In that way, you might call Four Treasures of the Sky a coming-of-age novel, though it’s different in tone from any I can think of.

Her kidnapping interrupts her education and self-discovery, and much else. Kept for a year in captivity, where she’s taught English, she’s sent overseas to a brothel in San Francisco. The author may pull a punch once her protagonist arrives in America, but rest assured, Zhang doesn’t protect her characters. Daiyu also has further misadventures in Idaho, where she tries to pass as a man. Throughout, she experiences or observes the brutalities women suffer at the hands of men, or each other.

Frank Leslie’s illustrated newspaper ran this cartoon in April 1882, commenting on the Chinese Exclusion Act of that year (courtesy Library of Congress via Wikimedia Commons; public domain)

But dressing and acting as a man offers only a veneer of protection; as a Chinese person, she’s subject to constant harassment, insult, degradation, and violence. “No — and furthermore” thrives here in full force, so that whenever a hint of kindness, generosity, or warmth reveals itself, you have to wonder how long it’ll last.

To survive, Daiyu, now called by other, invented names, retreats within her tragic alter ego, or, to be precise, literally and figuratively swallows her and holds her inside. What a remarkable metaphor, an attempted antidote to the bitterness that life forces down her throat. But the alter ego also represents the self that Daiyu may never show anyone, for fear of exposure and punishment. As a result, she won’t let herself trust or love, so that dreadful as her physical sufferings are, the emotional deprivation is that much worse.

Zhang’s prose, as quoted above, penetrates surfaces to illuminate the shadows or currents beneath, one pleasure of Four Treasures of the Sky. Besides the passages on calligraphy, I enjoyed one describing the differences between Chinese and English; the latter, soft-pedaling unimportant words while emphasizing others with vigor, “is a matter of timing and chaos.” Another passage precisely links male power to physicality, reflected in how men move and carry themselves. Like so many parts of the novel, it’s beautifully observed without a hint of self-consciousness.

Mostly, though, Zhang wants to redeem the largely forgotten history of American bigotry and violence against Chinese. In that, she performs a great service, in general and particular. In her afterword, she says that Trump’s lies blaming China for COVID energized her, in part, to write her story.

I warn you, however, that if you read this brilliant, disturbing book, be prepared to see humans at their worst. All the white characters are racist, and few of the Chinese have much to recommend them, either. Yet Daiyu’s constant struggle over whether to live fully, and how, prevents Four Treasures of the Sky from becoming a polemic or a tract. To me, the social and political observations feel integral and crucial to the narrative.

This is an important book.

Disclaimer: I obtained my reading copy of this book from the publisher through my work for Historical Novels Review, in which this post appeared in shorter, different form.