Buried In Print

I read. A lot. When I'm not reading, I'm often thinking about what I could be reading. When I am reading, I'm often thinking about what I'll be reading next. Sometimes the idea of reading is almost as good as reading and then I'm making booklists about what I will read someday. But later I'll be reading. I'm Buried In Print.

October's Reading, November's Plans

 

October was a busy reading month, and the library duedates for November are arriving fast and fierce. 

 

Surely I'm not the only one making lists of what to read in 2021?

 

MustReadEverything authors? Thomas King's Indians on Vacation

 

Rereading? Mariko Tamaki's This One Summer (Illus. Jillian Tamaki).

 

New-to-me? Daniel Polansky's The Seventh Perfection.

 

Short stories? Walter Mosley's The Awkward Black Man.

 

Debut? Eva Crocker's All I Ask.

 

Drama? August Wilson's Gem of the Ocean.

 

Dystopia? Catherine Hernandez's Crosshairs.

 

In quiet moments? Kamila Shamsie's Home Fire.

 

In extended afternoons? Paul Ortiz's An African American and Latinx history of the United States

 

I'm also busy playing BINGO for Margaret Atwood Reading Month in November too!

 

And I've recently finished the last of the 123 short stories in my Mavis Gallant reading project, which launched in 2017. Of course all the posts are online, so even if you're late to the party, you can join in, whenever you wish.

 

How about you: what are you reading these days, and what are you looking forward to reading soon?

Autumn 2020, Reading and Bookishness

 

This always feels like the busiest part of my reading year. My stack is overflowing. And, as usual, I have something in there for every reading mood. 

 

One of my MustReadEverything authors? Shani Mootoo's Polar Vortex.

 

For rereading? Audre Lorde's Sister Outsider.

 

A new-to-me author? Seth's Clyde's Fans.

 

A debut? Jean-Christophe Réhel's Tatouine. A dystopia?

 

Adam Wilson's Sensation Machines.

 

And in quiet moments? Kamila Shamsie's Home Fire.

 

In extended afternoons? Langston Hughes' Selected Letters.

 

And from my 2020 Must-Read list? The final volume in Lewis Grassic Gibbon's Scots Quair trilogy.

 

Also looking forward to, in November, Margaret Atwood Reading Month. Hosted by BuriedInPrint and ConsumedByInk

 

What are you looking forward to reading in October? 

"Instead of the dull pain of a winter strap, there were these new green switches that lost their sting long after the whipping was over. There was a nervous meanness in these long twigs that made us long for the steady stroke of a strap or the firm but honest slap of a hairbrush. Even now spring for me is shot through with the remembered ache of switchings, and forsythia holds no cheer." --Toni Morrison
"Instead of the dull pain of a winter strap, there were these new green switches that lost their sting long after the whipping was over. There was a nervous meanness in these long twigs that made us long for the steady stroke of a strap or the firm but honest slap of a hairbrush. Even now spring for me is shot through with the remembered ache of switchings, and forsythia holds no cheer." --Toni Morrison

Samar Yazbek’s A Woman in the Crossfire: Diaries of the Syrian Revolution (2012) #ReadtheChange

Some days I picked up Samar Yazbek’s A Woman in the Crossfire, to read only two pages, and set it aside.

 

Other days I picked it up and forced myself to read a certain number of sections (being that it’s a diary).

 

Afterwards, whether a couple of pages or a couple of sections, I would adopt some simple task – chopping vegetables or washing the dishes, ironing or carting the compost to the bin –tasks requiring little concentration, while the images from the diary loosened and dissipated.

 

Unsurprisingly, these Diaries of the Syrian Revolution are grim reading.

 

In translation by Max Weiss, the prose is clear, even perfunctory. That’s just what I needed. A year ago, I could not have located Syria on an unlabelled map.

 

Samar Yazbek’s name was not one I recognized, nor did I understand how unusual it was for someone in her family (which supports the regime) to have broken with tradition to expose what she witnesses of the revolutionary activity in her homeland.

 

This book might not be intended as a beginning, but it offers me a way into the subject, a path towards understanding.

 

She writes: “I was a traitor to my sect for being on the side of the demonstrators. I wrote two pieces about the protest movement, in which I talked about the practices of violence and killing and arrest carried out by the security forces. They responded by posting articles on a mukhabarati website discussing my relationship with American agents, a ready-made excuse the security apparatus would always resort to in order to clamp down on people who have their own opinions.”

 

The rest of this post is here.

Ian Urbina’s The Outlaw Ocean (2019) #ReadtheChange

The library classification data for The Outlaw Ocean suggests categories like Fisheries-Corrupt practices, Travel, Special interest, Adventure, True Crime. All of these seem correct and yet none of them seems right.

 

This is just over 400 pages long – with another hundred pages of notes (sources, readings, digressions) and more than ten pages of recommended reading. Based on four years of reporting and thousands of hours of interviews: each of these fifteen chapters reads like a condensed book. It took me more than six weeks to read, alongside other books (of course).

 

The idea behind my #ReadTheChange project for this year is to select a few books which I suspect will change my understanding of the world. Based on a personal recommendation from a trusted venue or reading friend, like the New York Times Book Review podcast. That’s how I learned about Ian Urbina’s reporting so I was anticipating a couple of the topics; I hadn’t anticipated how engrossing each of them would become for me.

 

Continued on BuriedInPrint...

The endlessness of the TBR

 

All of this year's reading projects have been inspiring so far. The kind of inspiring that results in even more reading material added to the TBR.

 

Yesterday I picked up a few more from the library, including Vivian Gornick's book on Rereading, which I'm sure is going to not only make me want to reread a bunch of stuff, but also find new things that I want to read for the first time. 

 

#niceproblemtohave

Beginning in November

 

I'm still busy reading selections from the CanLit prizelists, I've recently finished Thea Lim's An Ocean of Minutes and am slowly reading through Eric Dupont's Songs for the Cold of Heart (Trans. Peter McCambridge), both shortlisted for the Giller Prize, both very good and quite different from one another. 

 

For Margaret Atwood Reading Month, I'm re-reading Life Before Man.

 

For a reading challenge, I am exploring Zora and Me, a fictionalized biography for middle-grade readers.

 

Finally I've gotten into reading Ms. Marvel (the third volume).

 

And I'm also a few chapters away from finishing Elizabeth Arthur's Antarctic Navigation. It has been on my shelves, unread, since 1994, but it is just wonderful: slow and dense and snowy. I am lost in it, in the best way, and I'm not sure I remember what my stack looks like without this bulky volume in it.

A Bulky Stack

Antarctic Navigation - Elizabeth Arthur Carnival: A Novel - Rawi Hage Washington Black - Esi Edugyan

Mostly, these days, I'm preoccupied by reading selections from the CanLit prizelists,

 

I've just finished Rawi Hage's Beirut Hellfire Society (longlisted for the Giller, shortlisted for the Writers' Trust and Governor General's): the story of Pavlov, who has inherited his father's responsibility for the dead.

 

The Hellfire Society attends to the bodies of those who have been abandoned, witnesses their burning and, on occasion, carrying out the wishes of those who have passed him instructions. Set in Beirut and in the surrounding mountains, this is a grim story but not a bleak one.

 

Hage's other novels, Carnival and DeNiro's Game and Cockroach, all consider lives on the margins, lives that might be overlooked, and he inhabits his characters with tremendous sensitivity and grace. These are not comfortable stories to read, but these are parts of the world in which life is not comfortable: essential, challenging stories.

 

Now I'm reading in a flurry: Paige Cooper's stories in Zolitude (longlisted for the Giller and shortlisted for the Goveror General's), Sheila Heti's Motherhood (shortlisted for the Giller), and Esi Edugyan's Washington Black (nominated for everything, or so it seems). 

 

Short stories, a strange hybrid of fiction/memoir, and a historical novel by the author of Half-Blood Blues: this is quite a demanding mix but an interesting one. 

 

Last, but not least, Elizabeth Arthur's Antarctic Navigation has been on my shelves, unread, since 1994, but it is just wonderful: slow and dense and snowy: I am lost in it, in the best way. 

 

With October in mind, I've also read the first few pages of Wilkie Collins' The Moonstone and Charles Palliser's The Quincunx, but these are getting the short end of the proverbial reading stick for now. 

""Reading was my addiction and I read from the moment I woke up until I fell asleep at night. There was that moment before I learned to read when I used to trace my hand under the words, understanding that this symbol meant this thing in the picture above. And then there was that next moment, when the code was broken and everything was clear.""
Nobody Cries at Bingo - Dawn Dumont

Dawn Dumont's Nobody Cries at Bingo (Saskatoon: Thistledown Press, 2011).

How to Fall: Stories - Edith Pearlman

During the fall some brown light made its way through the one spotted window; by winter the only light came from a table lamp: a dark little pot whose paper shade was veined like an old face.
“Home Schooling”

Spending time with Mavis Gallant

Paris Stories - Mavis Gallant, Michael Ondaatje

Reading through the short stories of Mavis Gallant is taking time. Already. Still in the first collection.

 

Even though the early stories do not seem quite as layered and complicated as the stories of Alice Munro (my last reading project for short stories), they still invite rereading.

 

There is always something simmering beneath the scene. Mind you, a single read does sketch a lovely moment. But the rereading is very rewarding. 

 

What reading project is taking a lot of your time these days?

Vickie Gendreau's Testament (Trans. Aimee Wall)

Testament - Vickie Gendreau

Originally written after the author had been diagnosed with a brain tumour, Testament is a response to the news that Vickie Gendreau would have little time left to live: about a year.

 

The novel's translator, Aimee Wall, writes about the work, a few months after its author died, in Lemon Hound.

She explains: "I have spent a lot of time trying to find a way into writing about this book. I wanted to talk about it, but then wasn't sure I knew how. I went looking."

 

She goes looking "for other novels written from similar places of suddenly-limited time" and writes about the novel in numbered paragraphs, assembling fragments of information and observation and reflection.

 

I find myself wondering where, in the sequence, it occurred to her that she could translate Vickie Gendreau's work. When she realised that it could work, could connect with English audiences despite the linguistic challenges.

 

In the translator's note, Aimee Wall observes that Testament "moves between the present and the near-future, between poetry and prose, between French and English" in a “textured, hybrid language” which makes translation particularly challenging.

 

And, then, there is a subject matter.

 

Debilitating illness is one thing.

 

"I never left the hospital. I will never fully leave the hospital. I come back every day for my radiation treatments. I have this little coloured scarf and a ton of hats to hide the hair I’m losing."

 

Fatal illness is yet another.

 

"You don’t want people talking about miracles when they’re discussing your recovery."

Testament chronicles present-day events ("My mother accumulates old visitor badges and cards for my appointments in her huge purse.").

 

But the bulk of the work is preoccupied with future events, imagined encounters with the author's friends after her death and imagined encounters with these imagined encounters.

 

So, Raphaêlle observes: "I’m wearing a black dress. Vickie too. We’re wearing balck. I think black is charming. It’s slimming." And Maman notes: "I didn’t understand any of Vickie’s book. Her friend Mathieu is going to help me make some sense of this document."

 

When she speaks to readers directly, Vickie Gendreau sometimes speaks of ordinary things. "There will always be a collection agency to wake me up in the morning. There will always be a pot of something rotten in my fridge. There will always be someone to hate me. Someone to make a fool of me on athe telephone at three in the morning. Someone to treat me like a slut in front of my family. Someone to steal my drink, someone to steal my purse."

 

And she is aware of the concept of readership, of the ways in which readers might interact with words on a page. Specifically her words. And difficulties with endings. "I won’t bore you with that too much. My stories never work. That’s why I like poetry, it’s always infinite. I’m suspicious of people who end their poems with a period."

 

But, more often it's as Aimee Wall describes. "Testament pulls the reader in close and then sometimes doesn’t let her in on the joke." As though we are "occasionally eavesdropping on snippets of conversation for which we have little context, smiling at inside jokes we don’t really understand".

 

Anyway, is that the point with a book like this: understanding? I wonder if one could adapt the translator's statement to imagine the author being interviewed about her work, after her death, after some time has passed: "I spent a lot of time trying to find a way into writing my book. I wanted to talk about everything, but then wasn't sure I knew how. I went looking."

 

Perhaps, in the end (for how can we not think of endings now), it is less about the reading, less about the writing, and more about the looking.

 

About leaving something behind which does not end with a period --

Source: http://www.buriedinprint.com/?p=17318

A new reading project for 2017

Because one can never have too many reading projects. Apparently. 

Catherine Cooper's White Elephant (2016)

White Elephant - Catherine Cooper

A white elephant was historically bestowed as a burden which had the outward appearance of a gift; a courtier charged with its care and upkeep would have a beautiful creature to display, but the weight of the responsibility undeniable.

 

In Catherine Cooper's debut novel, the question of gifts and burdens permeates the lives of its characters.

At the heart of the novel are a married couple, Ann and Richard, and their child, Tor; each of these characters is presented in alternating close-third-person narratives.

 

Perspective is everything: just as an elephant can be a gift or a burden, a single event can be a blessing or a curse, a single person provoking inspiration or desperation.

As the novel progresses, perspectives shift; what appeared to be an act of giving up in despair becomes an act of escape in triumph, what seemed a scientific certainty becomes an element of faith.

 

Richard has long wanted to practice medicine in Africa, and his desire to influence others raises questions of culture and faith, tradition and belief. Seeking to impose dramatic changes on the residents of a Sierra Leone community immediately provokes questions of power and control, vulnerability and neediness.

 

Ironically, the visitors who are apparently motivated by a desire to provide aid, are tremendously needy indiviuals.

 

This is to be expected from Tor's character, as a young child, but his parents relentlessly work to satisfy their own needs, under the guise of altruism, and leave behind a trail of devastation. In turn, Tor learns from these examples, and he, too, ranks personal convenience above compassion.

 

But whether the characters inhabit familiar or new territory, one theme echoes throughout the work: size does not equate with power. In the river of change, which these characters seek to cross, it's young Tor who leaves the boldest rift in his wake.

 

"Tor kept hacking at the [trunk of the] mango tree, and when he was worn out, he went down to the river’s edge and sat by himself. He wondered what was wrong with him. He didn’t mean to do those things. He didn’t want to hurt Aminata. He just wanted to go home. How much time had he spent listening to his mother talk about the mould and Richard, and now that she seemed to be getting better, he felt like he was losing her."

 

The small - from another perspective, the insignificant - can wield tremendous power.

Ann is decimated by the mould which flourishes in the walls of the house they inhabit. Despite her ongoing costly and exhaustive contracts for renovation, these tiny organisms thrive in an environment which drains and exhausts (even nauseates) Ann.

 

From spores to insects to rats, small creatures wreck considerable devastation. They also serve as convenient targets for larger people to blame, as the impetus for their unhappiness and dissatisfaction. And, as such, their movements, on the periphery of significant relationships, have a peculiar resonance with the characters.

 

"The most unforgivable example of this was when he [Jusuf, who worked in the house] scraped the mould off the walls, releasing the spores that now lived in her lungs and consumed her thoughts. But this was only one of many examples of his incompetence. A few days earlier she’d caught him feeding sugar water to the ants in the kitchen. When she’d confronted him, he’d said, ‘If we give them what they want, they will go away.’"

 

The breakdown of a body (and, as perspectives shift, its endurance) is considered throughout the work, and physical vulnerabilities contribute to (and, other times, erupt from) spiritual and intellectual breakdowns.

 

"He [Richard] watched for a while as the insect flapped its wings in wild futility, and when it finally stopped, he poked at it with a pencil to start it up again, reasoning that the best thing was for it to wear itself out quickly."

 

This kind of detail is more important to White Elephant than setting, although one might expect otherwise in a novel which touches upon two regions as striking as Nova Scotia and Sierra Leone.

 

Perhaps this is a deliberate decision not to engage with traditional CanLit's emphasis on descriptions of the natural world, or perhaps it is a reflection of the characters' perspectives: it could be argued that none of the three - neither Richard, nor Ann nor Tor - truly inhabits Sierra Leone.

 

It could also be argued that none of these characters truly inhabits their own self. They live at a distance from themselves, literally and figuratively.

 

"Dot told the priest that their mother wasn’t herself, but Ann believed that her mother had never been herself before then, and that brief breach in the seemingly impenetrable wall that had always stood between them helped Ann to let go of years of bitterness and pain."

 

As such, letters are used to bridge gaps, from 'home' and 'away'. Throughout the novel, this is used effectively, particularly to capture whether a threat perceived by a character is realistic (or inflated).

 

The letters in the epilogue, however, seem to be included to offer an echo of something-like-closure (you can imagine, with three damaged and struggling characters, that there isn't any true closure awaiting a reader of such a story - no spoiler, right?).

 

They provide a voice to characters who only exist at a distance for both readers and characters, but these are characters who have not been afforded an independent voice in the narrative so far; this does serve as a reminder that beyond the preoccupations of three family members, many other lives unspool (for better or worse), but to conclude the story in such a manner seems a concession to convention.

 

Readers who have endured more than 300 pages in the company of Ann and Richard and Tor, smothered by their insular and angsty perspectives, could have accepted nothing-even-remotely-like-closure on the final pages.

 

Although being in close quarters with these characters is uncomfortable, White Elephant is not without its lighter moments. There are many scenes in which the overwhelming emotion is anger or fear, in which tension is palpable, but readers can catch a glimpse of a comic element, as the behaviour of the characters approaches a ridiculous level of self-absorption.

 

It's particularly amusing, for instance, to have Richard lament the fact that Ann has left his book out in the rain, so that "he would have to wait until he got back to Canada to find out what had become of the main character, although it had seemed obvious for some time that he was planning to off himself, a conclusion Richard had started to look forward to as the man became increasingly whiny and fanatical".

 

None of the characters in White Elephant would define themselves as whiny or fanatical, but any one of them exhibits characteristics which could be interpreted that way, depending on one's perspective.

 

Ultimately Catherine Cooper's novel reminds readers that one person's burdensome elephant is another person's beloved companion. Ann and Richard and Tor feel their lives pulling downwards at every joint. They cannot bear the weight of their own selves, even though they desperately want to slough them off.

 

This review originally appeared on BuriedInPrint.

Joni Murphy's Double Teenage (2016)

Double Teenage - Joni Murphy

Celine and Julie are negotating the borders of girlhood, wandering back and forth across dotted lines and territories both more and less available to them as the years pass.

 

They trade L.M. Montgomery's girlhood classics for "Law and Order" and Our Bodies, Ourselves, while readers follow in their footsteps in narratives which alternately focus on one girl, then the other.

 

Double Teenage is divided into four parts (delightful wordplay in their naming, alluding to some of the novel's themes and motifs), the first three presented chronologically and the last restarting the numbering and taking a more objective view.

 

It's as though the final section of the work is taking measurements and performing calculations based on some of the sensory and cultural details shared in the narratives of the girls' growing years, studies and analyses taking over where the imagery and emotions left off.  (There are some lovely bits early on, like, "I carry you around in my mind like it’s a pocket.")

 

In the novel's early pages, readers have an eye on the girls' experiences, which Joni Murphy presents in such a way that, even if readers have not grown up in a small town, near the U.S./Mexico border, some aspects are familiar (for instance, classic novels, and TV shows with hundreds of episodes).

 

"The books were classic girl fiction: Alice in Wonderland and Anne of Green Gables and Emily of New Moon and all the Little House books and Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights. As if she had been there, Celine’s mother spoke about prairie fires and scarlet fevers, initiation rituals and torrential downpours, family betrayals and corset-induced fainting spells. Her voice moved like a wagon. It moved like feet in leather moccasins padding through dust and starvation. Her voice lost children to fever."

 

Celine's mother reads aloud, often stories that she thinks might ease her daughter's passage through girlhood. But other than the Little House books, which are clearly tales of survival against the elements (filled with natural disasters and the trials of pioneer life), these stories feature girls who learn that care-giving is the ultimate achievement.

 

The men and boys they meet? On the page and in the world? Their stories are epic, only pretending to hold little substance; they are inherently worthwhile. "He told the myth of his family like a flat but colorful film."

 

Not until they are older, starring in their own features, do Celine and Julie begin to tell stories in their own voices. "At eighteen they finally felt like performers rather than audience."

 

Not until they are older, do they recognize that the risks they face are an integral part of the narratives they inhabit, the stories told about their kind.

 

"They modeled new lives. Both Celine and Julie put deserts behind them, convincing themselves it was just a corrupted cowboy land – a myth world cast in violet light – which they were now safely out of. The real world felt brutal, yes, but also so beautifully visible, and they were finally in it."

 

Double Teenage considers the desire to consume stories, to transform experiences into types, dreams into expectations. "The people in the auditorium, classmates and teachers, trafficked in this material. They refined, packaged, traded, cut, and consumed these kind of ideas."

 

It's not only material which is treated in this matter-of-fact manner. What else is refined, packaged, traded, cut, and consumed?

 

Celine and Julie have so many questions, seemingly endless questions when they are girls, when they expect to feel aswim, and later even more questions, but the potential to give voice to them is diminished. It's as though these questions should not be asked, as though the asking of them violates a code.

 

"Who do dead bodies belong to? Who do women’s bodies belong to? Are women beings or objects? Is there something between?"

 

Joni Murphy's narrative straddles the line between a character-driven story and a treatise to be discussed, something living and breathing and something only understood from afar. There is more than one way to look at it, more than one valid formula.

"What grips their insides is knowledge of their value, their worthlessness. They flee because, in their world, existence hinges on a litany of imperatives. Be pretty, charm, adapt to threat. The lessons might be summarizde as Be good or else."

 

What happens when "or else" is the only answer?

 

<a href="http://www.buriedinprint.com/?p=16256">This review was originally published on BuriedInPrint.</a>

Country of Red Azaleas - Domnica Radulescu

In the middle of her long, incense-soaked wedding ceremony, Lara Kulicz amuses herself by creating a philosopher's alphabet, assigning a name to each letter of the alphabet, identifying X for Xenophon just when the priest declares the couple "man and wife".

 

In much the same way, Domnia Radulescu incorporates light-hearted elements and subplots which offer readers relief from the novel's central theme - the devastating effects of the 1982 Bosnian War.

 

As with Elena Ferrante's My Brilliant Friend, a friendship is a key component of the novel, and this is a friendship viewed from a distance too. Their friendship - like every other aspect of their lives - is fundamentally shaped by the genocidal war surrounding them, and readers are preoccupied more with the absences of the women in each other's lives than their presences, more with their feelings of separation and alienation than union and intimacy.

 

Katja Rudolph’s Little Bastards in Springtime would make a great reading companion, exploring the aftermath of this conflict from the perspective of a young man, Jevrem, who also survives the conflict, but is forced to draw and redraw his own borders in the aftermath.

 

“We call ourselves The Bastards of Yugoslavia, as a joke. We like the word bastard. It’s got a ring to it, and has a lot of different meanings. It’s what the nationalists who took over our country called us, the offspring of women in mixed marriages. They meant it as an insult, but we feel proud. It’s why we’re here, together, in this flat, endless city next to an abnormally large lake. They didn’t want us back home, not really, in all their new separate little cleaned-up countries, Slovenia, Croatia, Serbia and Montenegro, Macedonia. And Bosnia, split completely in half, Croats and Muslims on one side, Serbs on the other. Where were we beautiful mongrels meant to fit?”

 

There are many Bastards of Yugoslavia, beautiful mongrels, whose stories have not been told, but Domnica Radulescu's Country of Red Azaleas brings forth one such story.

 

Both Lara and Marija are untethered. One of them is ostensibly more protected, able to ruminate on this sense of dislocation: "We spoke Serbian again and the many consonants of my native language soothed my burning mouth, my parched throat, my devastated soul. I need a break from English, from America, from idiomatic expressions and mannerisms." The other is more overtly vulnerable, in the thick of the conflict: "But a boot kicking you in your stomach is always real and you can’t mistake it for not real. And you can’t mistake the dead bodies strewn next to you for the images flickering on the walls of a cave."

 

The settings are significant as representations of the characters' choices (and reactions, for there are not always true choices): Belgrade and Washington DC. From the Ferhadja Mosque to the Hirshhorn Sculpture, the details matter; but the symbolic importance of the point of confluence, in Belgrade, where the Danube and Sava rivers meet, is perhaps most important of all.

 

Domnica Radulescu's style is spare and her language uncomplicated, perhaps deliberately, in light of the horrific details which underpin the story, from the Srebrenica massacres to the mass rapes and NATO bombings.

 

These devastating events play out alongside other losses (e.g. divorce, custody, adultery), tragedies broad and narrow, rooted in a "shiny web of lies and a second life of illicit encounters". This particular conflict perfectly reflects the reality of broader identities resulting in intimate betrayals, "lives of halves", a "missed heartbeat".

 

Occasionally there is an emotive burst (Sarajevo described as a "delicious secret" and an experience as a "volcano of sorrow") but the language is simple. The structure is chronological, with half the book covering a broader swath of time (1980 - 2003) and the second half covering only 2003 and 2004. The narrative voice is first-person, consistent and direct.

 

Ultimately the novel's success lies in characterization, but this is a difficult connection to forge because of the element of distance inherent in the key relationships. Domnica Radulescu uses the motif of audience and performance to allow the reader to settle into a seat from which they can view at a distance.

 

Lara is named for the heroine of Doctor Zhivago, a story better known via the film version than the book, an American interpretation better known than the Russian original.

 

She imposes the perspective she learned from Hollywood on everyone she encounters, one man her Marlboro Man and another a mix of Clark Gable and Omar Sharif. She recognizes the tilt of a woman's chin to be the same angle as Ingrid Bergman's in the final scene of "Casablanca".

 

Both these references include strong relational plots but ultimately their stories are shaped by war, just as in Country of Red Azaleas.

 

This review originally appeared on BuriedInPrint.