Tag Archives: distant storytelling

The Pain Will Get Better: After Lives

16 Monday Jan 2023

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Review: After Lives, by Abdulrazak Gurnah
Riverhead, 2022. 309 pp. $28

In the 1890s, the German colonizers of East Africa suppress revolt after revolt with exemplary cruelty, meted out by their African askari troops. Over the course of years, the turmoil and hard times displace two people: Hamza, a teenage boy who flees domestic trouble to enlist in the askari corps; and Afiya, the young sister of another such would-be soldier, who leaves her in care of a childless businessman and his wife.

After excruciating years in military service, including the First World War, Hamza returns to the town he left and meets Afiya, now nineteen. Her physical sufferings don’t match his, but she’s paid a high price for being female. Before she settled with the businessman, her then-guardians took the money her brother had left for her upkeep, only to treat her like a slave, even beat her for knowing how to read and write.

Karl P. T. von Eckenbrecher’s 1896 painting depicting askaris under German command trading fire with rebels (courtesy bassenge.com via Wikimedia Commons; public domain)

Afiya’s current situation, though kinder physically, has its perils nevertheless. The businessman’s wife restricts her social activities in the name of Muslim female modesty and imposes religious devotions that the young woman performs dutifully while looking for small ways to rebel, both for respite and to hold onto a sense of self.

The mistress of the household also plans to marry Afiya off, preferably as second wife (read: plaything) to a man much older than herself. Consequently, the nascent attraction between Afiya and Hamza must pass unnoticed.

The story bears similarities to Cinderella, except that Hamza’s no handsome prince, and he’s rootless. Both lovers are. As he once observes about a war wound that troubles him greatly, “The pain will get better.” How that happens for the two of them provides the question the narrative aims to resolve.

After Lives therefore explores how cruel humans can be, and how we withstand it, or don’t. Gurnah recounts in precise detail the brutality shaping the askari existence, whether from training, the German officers’ contempt, methods of instilling discipline, or colonial philosophy. The Great War, which has no name as far as the askaris are concerned, feels like a confused, bloody mess:

The askari left the land devastated, its people starving and dying in the hundreds of thousands, while they struggled on in their blind and murderous embrace of a cause whose origins they did not know and whose ambitions were vain and ultimately intended for their domination. The [baggage] carriers died in huge numbers from malaria and dysentery and exhaustion, and no one bothered to count them. They deserted in sheer terror, to perish in the ravaged countryside.

I’m somewhat familiar with the colonial history of Africa, but I’ve never read anything about it as vivid or compelling as After Lives. By the time Hamza finally gets free, his body and soul have been punished terribly, yet he’s quietly unbowed. He’s withstood routine brutality and occasional help from unexpected quarters, but even the latter feels condescending, delivered from the pretense of moral and intellectual superiority. You have to admire a character as steadfast and dignified as Hamza, who can withstand injury and insult. But be warned: there’s no character arc to speak of, no change.

Afiya, though she copes with hardships she’s even less responsible for—she didn’t enlist in anything—travels a path less fraught, if no happier. I find her somewhat idealized, even a male fantasy in certain scenes, and, like Hamza, she doesn’t change. But she’s also appealing, and for similar reasons: she has the patience to endure until the pain gets better. A little guile also helps.

Gurnah’s storytelling style keeps its distance. This takes getting used to, but at least he shows plenty of feelings, unlike other omniscient narrations that tell them, with far less depth. The novel has much to say about colonialism, war, and, to a lesser extent, feminism, which sometimes reads like nonfiction, as with the passage quoted above. But again, it’s the story that counts, which packs a wallop.

I do find the first thirty pages confusing, full of back story I’m not sure is necessary, and the novel ends rather abruptly, with more of a political point than a personal one. But these obstacles shouldn’t deter you.

Gurnah won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2021. I mention that because it seems silly to glide over it; but I think that awards, even the most prestigious, often say little about an author’s true significance to literature, a judgment that changes over time, anyway. Read any Per Lägerkvist or Mikhail Sholokov recently? Rudyard Kipling’s white man’s burden sounds offensive today. Several years ago, I stumbled on a fine historical novel about the time of Charlemagne, The Days of His Grace, by a Swedish author I’d never heard of—Eyvind Johnson, who shared the Nobel in 1974 with Harry Martinson, whom I’d also never heard of.

So I won’t say that After Lives is deathless literature. But it is a good novel, about a time and place few Western readers know about, and for that, I recommend it.

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

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.

The Food of Love: The Pasha of Cuisine

06 Monday Sep 2021

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Review: The Pasha of Cuisine, by Saygin Ersin
Translated from the Turkish by Mark David Wyers
Arcade, 2016. 281 pp. $26

Once upon a time in Constantinople, a cook wangles a job at the sultan’s palace so he can spring the woman he loves from the harem. Is he dreaming? Does he really think he can infiltrate that inner sanctum, forbidden to all males save eunuchs, and spirit his lover away, let alone live to tell about it?

Not exactly. And the manner in which the cook — who has no other name — sets about his quest makes for a highly entertaining (and mouth-watering) narrative, recounted in a style reminiscent of the Arabian Nights. As you may imagine, “no — and furthermore” resides here, the penalty for failure is unthinkable, and there is considerable back story.

Turkish food, from central Anatolia (courtesy KayaZaKi, via Wikimedia Commons)

How does the cook, whom many call the Pasha of Cuisine, a title earned through talent and study and testament to his unique powers, come to be where he is? No one knows. What sorcery informs his skill, or, for believers in rational thought, why do his dishes have the effects they do? No one can figure that out either, though they try.

So there are two mysteries here, the man and his plan, and both depend on cooking. I’m all for that. And since it’s a cultural given that a Pasha of Cuisine cooks not only for himself or his patron or employer, but to raise the level of taste and appreciation throughout the land — so much so that harvests become more bountiful — the cook’s gift has a public meaning. Much rests on that, for his ability, his presence, open doors closed to ordinary chefs, let alone the story itself, wouldn’t work without that instant entrée.

That talent cuts two ways, however, for, as with anyone who works at the palace, you take your life in your hands:

Like the other [palace] gate, the Gate of Salutation was a passage, but much longer. The light at the other end seemed to be far, far away, as though symbolizing the plight of those who passed through. Living at the palace was a journey, the end of which was unknown as you walked through the Gate of Salutation. That held true for everyone, from the youngest page to His Highness the Sultan himself. You walked toward the light, yet it seemed that you’d never reach it. Your life spilled onto that infinite road moment by moment, hour by hour, and day by day; you were filled with the fear that you may be plunged into darkness at any time. And in the end, your life would be extinguished either at the hands of an executioner or by a natural death, at best becoming a few lines in a dusty history book.

Like all heroes on a quest, our cook has a tragic past, which influences what he has learned and how he has gone about it. Among his lessons are the six layers of taste; the ineffable names of flavors and aromas; and the spiritual powers of food to influence mood and character, moderated by bodily humors and the signs of the zodiac. It’s complicated but always intriguing.

Just as his education, his outer journey, leads him to the palace, his inner journey involves coming to terms with the pain he would rather forget. I like this psychological and philosophical aspect better than the concoctions themselves or the studies that inform them, not only because they are character-dependent, and character is a flimsy reed here, but also because of the storytelling style.

As in the paragraph quoted above, Ersin adopts a wide, omniscient lens, and though that suits his tale in a way—and is likely traditional–it also distances the reader. The narrative explains more than shows, and even when you see the action, in which people yield to the cook’s wishes, that miraculous quality I referred to earlier, you don’t always feel as if you’re in the scene. That applies particularly in the book’s first half, whereas, during the cook’s psychological quest, he and his surroundings come through more clearly.

Consequently, the narrative hangs mostly on the cook’s clever machinations and Byzantine plot twists (sorry; I couldn’t resist), not always satisfying, as they seem ordained, despite the depth of the struggle.

Yet The Pasha of Cuisine is worth your time as an entertaining tale of romance and intrigue. And if you read it, I suggest having snacks handy — tasty mezes, perhaps.

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

Distanced Vision: A Shadowed Fate

27 Monday Apr 2020

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Review: A Shadowed Fate, by Marty Ambrose
Severn, 2020. 180 pp. $29

In 1873, Claire Clairmont, the last surviving member of the Byron/Shelley literary circle from 1816, is scraping by in more ways than one. Living in genteel poverty in Florence with her niece and grandniece, Claire has little in her life besides them and treasured memories of Lord Byron, by whom she bore illegitimate daughter, Allegra. However, Allegra’s dead, having succumbed to typhus as a young child—or so Claire believes. But when Edward Trelawny, who married Mary Shelley after her poet husband died, tells Claire that her daughter may be alive after all, the news galvanizes her to action. Claire must find Allegra.

However, matters aren’t so simple. For one thing, Claire is furious that her old friend Trelawny has kept the secret for a half-century. Indeed, that is rather hard to explain, and both he and the narrative strain to do so. For another, Trelawny and Claire were lovers once, briefly, and he claims to still love her; though again, she’s dubious, considering that Mary Shelley was her half-sister, and he racked up two other wives besides.

Nevertheless, I like this premise as a potential romantic intrigue, and A Shadowed Fate might have grabbed me had the narrative focused on that as a counterpoint to the search for Allegra. We might have had the aging romantic figures conflict over past and present, with a window on what their lives have become, what they might have been, and truth versus perception. Instead, the narrative avoids the conflict between Claire and Trelawny while trying to make a mystery out of Allegra. I think that’s pretty thin material, and bringing in Byron doesn’t liven it up enough.

Claire Clairmont, portrait by Amelia Curran, 1819 (courtesy Newstead Abbey via Wikimedia Commons, public domain)

Partly, that’s because the story hinges too much on what happened fifty years or more before the novel begins, yet we never see this drama enacted. Rather, Claire reads about it in Byron’s memoirs of his attempt to aid Italian revolutionaries around the time of Allegra’s supposed death. Just as awkwardly, Allegra herself has a few paragraphs to narrate, here and there; how did that happen? Consequently, though Byron becomes the center of the story, no one interacts with him except for the people he’s writing about, only one whom still lives—and it’s not Claire. So he remains an offstage presence, and the crucial story feels distant.

Equally curious, Claire or Ambrose or both seem to have given him a pass for his despicable behavior, startling given that Byron had to be one of the most selfish, egotistical, and vindictive geniuses ever to draw breath. That wouldn’t matter if you understood why Claire still holds a candle for him; but he holds a candle for nobody, intent on burning it at both ends. Maybe that’s the trouble, evoking through a telescope a man who’s long dead, but I think there’s more to it. Compare, for instance, the portrayal here with that in The Enchantress of Numbers, Jennifer Chiaverini’s novel about his only legitimate child, the mathematician Ada Lovelace. Even though Byron appears briefly in that narrative, you see his attraction—and the horrific damage he causes.

As for the mystery in A Shadowed Fate, no plot twist ever reaches the level of “no — and furthermore.” Rather, it’s more like “maybe something will go wrong, but we don’t know.” That’s not enough to sustain any narrative, mystery or no, and when the major, climactic reversal arrives, a clichéd tableau results.

What you do get in A Shadowed Fate is a loving sketch of Italy, which Ambrose clearly knows and revels in. There are moments when you can soak in these places and wish you could see them as they were a hundred fifty years ago. But the characters intrude, and I find less to draw me, there. Much as the first fifty or so pages consist of dialogue dumping information, the characterization progresses through telling rather than showing. One significant example: I don’t see why Trelawny says that Claire was magnetic in her youth, or that he still cares for her.

I wish this novel stirred or beguiled me; unfortunately, it doesn’t.

Disclaimer: I obtained my reading copy of this book from the author’s publicist, in return for an honest review.