Greece: Three Junes

Three Junes

by Julia Glass

Don't you hate it when you don't enjoy a book that everyone else loves?  When this happens, I wonder a little bit what might be wrong with me.  Or what I must be missing.  Or the flip side of the coin ... what's wrong with or being missed by everybody else?  So when I got halfway through Julia Glass's prize-winning novel, Three Junes, and realized I was skimming a lot of pages, I forced myself to slow down, regroup, and try again with a more positive attitude.  I actually did a little research, trying to figure out what the appeal of this novel was for others, and the context helped a lot, kind of like it did when I read my book set in Algeria. 

Set in Scotland, Greece, and New York City, the story follows the McLeod family:  parents Paul and Maureen, and their three grown son, Fenno, David and Dennis.  The structure of the novel is a triptych, written in three parts that are related and function as one piece, but not necessarily intended to be viewed as a whole.  Glass could have written three separate books, a trilogy instead of a triptych, but she might have lost the thread of the important themes of life, death, grief, and connection.

In the first section, our narrator is Paul.  He is traveling in Greece, just after Maureen's death, and he becomes enchanted with Fern, a young American woman in his tour group, who propels him to think retrospectively about his marriage and, as the book jacket references, its "secret sorrows."  We come to know Paul as a quiet, steady, introspective, and somewhat naïve character, and we love him because of those traits.  His gentleness is in sharp contrast to Maureen's fierceness, epitomized in a poignant scene where he embraces her from behind while her hands are submerged in water ... he does not realize that she is drowning two newborn puppies and is stunned but accepting when he realizes what she is doing.  He is like the proverbial deer in headlights throughout this part of the novel: uncomfortable but not confrontational about Fenno's sexuality, hurt but not hostile about Maureen's close relationship with a male friend, attracted but distant from the lovely and intriguing Fern.  I wanted to hug him and tell him that everything will be okay.

Part two is Fenno's story of leaving his homeland of Scotland, bound for New York City where he emerges with confidence as a gay man and establishes himself as distinctly and differently from Paul as he can.  We meet Mal, his friend who ultimately dies of AIDS but not without blistering anger and resentment at his fate.  And his mentor, who plays both paternal and fraternal roles in Fenno's life, helping him to open a bookstore and put down roots in his adopted home.  And Tony, the photographer, who connects us to the third section, which is Fetn's story.  Yes, we meet her again, this time pregnant and a little lost.  She and Fenno find themselves with crossed paths, but they never realize their most intimate connection: Paul.  

By the time I got to Fern, I was really limping along.  Despite my research and my determination to finish the darn book.  I can't really say I got much out of Fern's story.  Or the entire novel.  But I can say I tried.

France: The Nightingale

The Nightingale

by Kristin Hannah

Seems like everyone I know has read this one, and I guess that makes sense since it's been on the NY Times bestseller list for 53 weeks.  The story is richly compelling, one you won't want to put down until you've reached the conclusion.  I love those kinds of novels.  They make me stay up too late at night, walk around the house with the book in my hand, and put off daily chores in favor of squeezing in a few pages at any opportunity. 

Set in France during World War II, this is the story of the French experience of the Holocaust, told from the perspective of two sisters who react to the German occupation very differently but who ultimately find they have more in common than they ever believed possible.  Vianne, the elder sister, is happily married with one child, Sophie, when the war arrives in France and changes everything, beginning with her husband Antoine's departure for the front.  Alone and unsure, she bravely rises to the occasion, coping with the German officers who billet in her home, the loss of her best friend to a concentration camp, and the extreme poverty and hunger that all are facing.  Her younger sister, Isabelle, was always a rebel in youth and continues to be so as she refuses to accept the German occupation of her beloved France and joins the resistance, taking on increasingly dangerous missions to try to save her country and as many human beings as she can along the way.  Their relationship is strained because of childhood trauma - the death of their beloved mother and their father's resulting neglect and absence from their lives.  But as the story unfolds, they realize their beliefs about each other are utterly wrong.  There are more ways than one to be brave and righteous in the face of horror.

I've previously resisted reading Kristin Hannah's novels because I perceived them to be in the chick-lit category, which I have not been very interested in reading.  Holocaust themes, however, generally defy the non-substantive subject matter that I judge chick-lit to embody.  I remember once in grad school, we read Maus I and Maus II, by Art Spiegelman.  These are graphic biographical novels that tell the story of Spiegelman's journey to understand his father's history as a Holocaust survivor and to make sense of their relationship.  The discussions we had in class about these books were complex and heavy ... and ultimately, unanswerable.  How can the Holocaust be conveyed with both accuracy and integrity in any form of art?  Is it appropriate to do so?  Who has the right to do so?  What is our responsibility, as readers, for receiving a biographical account of someone's Holocaust experience?  Does that change if the account is fictional? 

I am drawn to novels about this unthinkable part of human history that took place less than a century ago.  And I've thought a lot about why.  Because it feels really strange to "enjoy" something about a dark stain on humanity.  It's like when my daughter and I visited the Holocaust Museum in Washington, DC last year and afterwards, someone asked us, "Did you have fun?"  Um, ... no.  "Fun" is not the adjective to use for the Holocaust Museum, and neither is "enjoy."  We were so somber, so introspective, so humbled as we walked through the exhibits, we did not speak.  After a short time, we went in separate directions, silently agreeing that we needed to bear witness in our own private ways.

And that's what I think Holocaust fiction does.  It forces us to bear witness.  To look with eyes that can't be shut, to remember, hold space for the victims, and respect the survivors and their descendants who live with the weight of this history.

Brazil: Snow Hunters

Snow Hunters

by Paul Yoon

I like the idea of this book more than the book itself.  The themes of immigration and learning how to thrive in a new land and culture are among my favorites, but alas, this book is not.  The main character, Yohan, is a quiet, contemplative refugee who we meet as he arrives in Brazil after two years in a Japanese prison camp.  We don't know why he decided not to return home to Korea after being released from prison at the end of the war.  We get very little insight about his former life in Korea, but there are glimpses of his reminiscence of the camp, where he cared for his friend Peng after he was blinded in battle.  We know he has been traumatized in a way the keeps him from truly connecting to those he comes to know in Brazil.  The story, which has little dialogue and much exploration of Yohan's inner thoughts and feelings, spans ten years without much of anything happening.  I agree with other reviews that note the poetry of the narrative, but the book did not speak to my heart.

P.S. I do think Snow Hunters should get a prize for most beautiful, mesmerizing covers.  I just love the feelings it evokes.

And yes, for those of you who are following closely enough, I have suddenly gone out of order.  Gasp!  So here's what happened ...

About two weeks ago, I experienced a miserable night of insomnia.  You know, those never-ending hours of darkness where you find yourself tossing, turning, kicking off the sheets, yanking them back on, reaching ridiculous levels of frustration over any little sound in the night ... not that you were going to be sleeping anyway.  My mind was racing with my growing list of things to do, and suddenly, I realized I was feeling exactly the same way I used to feel before moving away from the chaos of the Washington DC area.  I had one of those lightbulb moments, suddenly understanding that after a long and lovely break from stress, which I'd credited to my lovely new hometown in the Shenandoah Valley, I'd somehow managed to allow the craziness back into my life.  And I was suffering the consequences of forgetting to be mindful about how I spend my days. 

I got up at about 3:00 a.m. and made a list of all the things I had committed to and all the things that were worrying, stressing, or overwhelming me.  And then I made some changes.  I communicated with some very wonderful, supporting, understanding people whose help I needed to set better boundaries or back out of things I really wanted to do but just couldn't follow through on.  (They were all amazing about it, by the way ... note to self: keep surrounding yourself with people like this while also being more careful about making promises you can't keep.)  Over the next week, I focused on getting things ... er, mainly myself ... back under control, and I'm happy to say that the process itself cured my insomnia and the impact of the process has significantly reduced my stress.

On the chopping block, unfortunately, was this blog.  I was going to retire it without even getting very far into my own self-assigned challenge.  Reading is probably the most important gift I give myself.  It's my escape, my relaxation, my form of meditation, my chance to learn and grow.  It's something I share with people I love ... my mother, sister, mother-in-law, closest friends, favorite colleagues, and sometimes my children although they don't read as much as I wish they did.  It's a huge part of my identity.  And the blog, while fun and interesting and challenging, has detracted from the overall power that reading has to positively influence my days.  Too much worry about picking the right book, finding one that I even want to bother with reading, and feeling frustrated when the one selected turns out to be disappointing.  I suffered over Bhutan ... found plenty, just didn't really want to read them right now, or maybe ever.  So I was ready to throw in the towel and skip the entire blog instead of only Bhutan.

But then I read this book set in Brazil anyway.  It was freely chosen, for myself, and not for the blog, and I wanted to write about it.  So I'm switching things up.  Changing my own rules.  I'll keep blogging since I'm really doing this for myself anyway.  I mean, I do hope that anyone who is reading this actually enjoys it, but I know there aren't too many people clicking on the link to these pages and that's okay.  This is about my journey, so I'm kicking back just a little and plan to keep working my way around the world but in the order in which I feel inspired.  I've said before that often times, books choose me.  I can't, and frankly don't want to force myself to pick up a book that's not calling my name. 

So today ... Brazil, and tomorrow ... I'm not sure.  That's part of what I find joyful about reading ... you just never know where it will take you.