Midwives

Love.

Love. Love. Love this book.

Will post more later. But seriously, go read this. So good.

Didn't I complain previously about incomplete sentences? Oh well.

Empress

This was an interesting book.  I don't think I liked it, but I was interested by it.  It was written in French by an author originally from China and translated into English.  The writing style is unusual, but I'm not sure how much of that is translation, how much of that is an author writing in a second language, and how much of that is authorial intent.
It is written from the perspective of Empress Wu, whom we know as Heavenlight; a real woman who ruled China and contributed to the historical archetype of the evil usurping empress.  As an East Asian History major, I know all about that archetype.  Critics of the cultural revolution used Empress Wu and others as examples to malign Madame Mao... it's that central.  Anyway, the book follows her from fetus (no, really) to death.  She is an interesting character - sympathetic at first, dealing with the loss of her father and her family status, then with isolation and lonliness as an unnoticed imperial concubine.  Then, she gains strength, love, then power and eventually destroys her own family to maintain what she's gained.  All the while, there are lovers (male and female) and political machinations.  At times, I got bored with the story and with Heavenlight. I lost track of which advisor she trusted or was executing at any given moment and why she was mad at her husband or her current lover.  I suppose that is a risk with a story that covers such a long, complex life.  But I had trouble finishing it, maybe because I knew her rule fell apart at the end and I didn't want to see the unraveling.
I'd recommend it for history nerds and people who are dedicated lovers of historical fiction, but I'm not sure it has much wider appeal. It is just so overwhelmingly detailed and so centered on a single person's perspective that I didn't find it very enjoyable.
I give it a 5 out of 10.

Next: #8 Midwives by Chris Bohjalian

White Ghost Girls

This book was... odd.  The author clearly went to the "beautiful but disjointed descriptions of objects" school of writing that I thought was very high-brow when I was in high school. Now I'm too old and tired to find it much more than annoying.  I'm sure, from an educated critic's perspective, the writing is lovely and inventive.  But seriously, I can only handle so many incomplete sentences about the color of a fish at a market stall before I really want to move on.
This book is ostensibly about a white American family living in Hong Kong. The father is a journalist covering the Vietnam war and is mostly an absentee. The mother is distant and exhausted for unclear reasons. There are two daughters, one who is wild and the other who protects her. And, of course, there is the requisite staff person of local extraction.  The Amah in this case is little better than a stereotype: a large Chinese woman who speaks broken English, yells at the girls and takes them to markets and temples. The book is very short, so maybe I shouldn't expect more characterization of a secondary character. But you're already treading a little thin writing about a white family in Hong Kong, couldn't you try to make the one important Chinese character a little less... ugh?
Given that I will be a doctor in 12 weeks (hide your children), I couldn't help diagnosing the wild daughter with a personality disorder. She clearly has histrionic or borderline personality disorder. This novel is practically the DSM IV (DSM V wasn't out when I started med school).  So, I had some trouble identifying with her and her sister's attempts to help her.
And then, the writing. There is actually a decent amount of plot in this book.  There's a possible sexual assault, the Vietnam war, and even the death of a major character, but it gets a bit lost in the writing.  So much of the small space in this book is allotted to "evocative" descriptions of the landscape or the way a man holds his brandy snifter.  All in incomplete sentences. Like this. Repeatedly.
So, yea, I guess you can tell I didn't like it much.  But I finished it.

I give it 2 out of 10.

Next up: #42 Empress by Shan Sa

Rut

This was another quick read, but a very strange one.  I had no information as to what Rut was about, since the back cover carried no description.  After having read it, I'm still not sure I know what it's about.  It's the story of a small town in Colorado (I think) that used to be a tourist destination but has since largely died out due to the wholesale ecologic destruction of much of the United States. From what I could gather, global warming caused major climatic changes and then pollution resulted in mass extinction or bizarre mutations. Every frog in this new world is deformed - extra legs, failure to mature from tadpole to frog, etc.  This is important because one of the main characters is a naturalist studying frogs.  As with Cranford, there isn't actually much of a plot. We just follow the naturalist as she finds some healthy frogs, then follow other members of the community about their daily lives. The mayor is corrupt, the town vet has become both the doctor and the school principle, and the local mine is hiring foreign workers.  The book is an interesting study of a town after collapse and I enjoyed reading it, but I wasn't invested in any of the characters. The book is short and it bounces around so much that you never really get a handle on who any of the characters are.  The "world building" is also scattered and can be distracting when a new tidbit gets dropped into a scene at random.  For example, you apparently have to register your religion in the state of Colorado, and creationism is taught in the local school. What impact this has on the characters or why this is the case in the larger context of this altered world is not clarified.

I liked reading this book, but I wanted more. I wanted to know more about the world and why certain things had changed and others had not. I wanted to know more about the characters.  I think that speaks to the strength of the writing... I just wanted more of it.

I give this book 6 out of 10.

Next up: #41 White Ghost Girls by Alice Greenway

I am no longer in possession of Possession

Well, that was quick. I can't find my copy of Possession. I'm going to guess that in the long dry spell in my blog posts, I realized that book was too damn long and that I had already started it twice and failed to finish it. So I probably donated it.  If I ever find it again (probably while moving), maybe I'll read it then. Or maybe I'll donate it for real.

Anyway, new book assignment: #22 Rut by Scott Phillips

Cranford

I have said previously, twice, that I love Edith Wharton. It is also true that I love Elizabeth Gaskell.  I love the way she writes and how she can make a character completely ridiculous but also, somehow, sympathetic and even likable.  Cranford is a short novel that follows the lives of the "aristocratic" residents of the small town of Cranford over the course of years (maybe decades - the passage of time isn't quite clear).  A few new characters enter and leave, but mostly it's the story of the rather dull lives of the spinsters and widows who live in obsessively genteel poverty.  There is debate over whether they can speak to a young lady whose uncle owns a shop, since these ladies pride themselves on having no connection with anyone who has to work for money.  Ultimately, they decide speaking is allowed. There is also a strict hierarchy among these ladies, based on who has the closest tie to the actual aristocracy.  The novel itself is an interesting commentary on how absurd these rules are, but how they provide some structure for the lives of women who really have nothing to do.  Perhaps it is just the feminist in me, but I also think there is a bit of commentary slipped in about why these women have nothing to do and why such limitations placed on ladies are mistaken.

There isn't really much of a plot line, so this book won't keep you riveted by wondering what's going to happen next, but the characters are fun and I found myself continuing just because I wanted to know what poor Miss Matty would get into a tizzy over next.

I give this book 8 out of 10.

Next up: #54 Possession by A.S. Byatt. That book is huge, so I think my run of multiple books in a week is going to be done for a while.

Incantations

My teenage self would have loved this book. Back in my younger days I used to read exclusively Asian and Asian-American authors, and I was a connoisseur of the Indian immigrant short story tale of woe.  This is a whole collection of them!
Ok that does sell the book short a bit. This is a collection of short stories written by an Indian author, now living in the US. All of the action takes place in India involving Indian characters, though some peripheral characters are ex-pats or NRIs.  The stories are quite short, mostly 10-15 pages, but they are rich and interesting. Most are a from a woman's perspective and all involve women's experiences, with feminist principles declared subtly but firmly throughout.
I loved most of the stories and got caught up in the characters' lives.  Some of the stories were tragic, some happy, but almost all were engrossing. The only exception were two stories involving the character of Sharmaji, a middle aged man who spends his entire day avoiding work that he is being paid to do. I couldn't quite find the point of these two stories, and I gave up halfway through the second one. He interacts with a manager named Miss Das, who it turns out is married and did not take her husband's name (gasp!), and I think the stories are supposed to contrast her work with Sharmaji's lack of it. I couldn't get past my distaste for Sharmaji long enough to figure it out.

I give this 8 out of 10. If you like Jhumpa Lahiri's and Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni's short story collections, you will like this one. Honestly, I liked the writing style of Appachana a bit better than Divakaruni.

Next up: #53 Cranford by Elizabeth Gaskell