The Vagabond – Colette (French)
It was Colette’s nature to overdramatize emotions; her fiction, which is based on her life experiences, reflects this aspect of her personality, and I can usually accept her on those terms. But the problem that tarnished this novel’s virtues was my persistent feeling that her first-person narrator was misrepresenting matters. We’re to accept that Renee’s first husband was such a monster that he destroyed her ability to give herself to another man, no matter how perfect he may be. Enter Max. Though at first she keeps this rich and handsome admirer at a distance, she slowly sees him for what he is: kind, considerate, sensitive and ready to marry her and thus end forever her money worries. Finally she concedes that she loves him, but she allows nothing beyond passionate kisses (though she ardently wishes for more). Renee goes on tour with the promise that when she returns she’ll marry Max, but in her letters to him she begins to pull away: “Love is so simple, isn’t it? You never supposed it had this ambiguous, tormented face? We love and give ourselves to each other, and there we are, happy for life, isn’t that it? Ah, how young you are . . .” Of course (to the delight of Erica Jong, who considered this to be “the first and best feminist novel”) Renee chooses the shabby life of a vagabond performer; at least she will retain her independence. And though she will experience solitude, she has the proud consolation of enduring it. I simply didn’t buy any of this, starting with the monster (after all, Renee was in her twenties when she married a notorious womanizer; how naive a victim could she be?). And would a worldly thirty-three year old woman who is fearful of aging and losing her physical charms act like a virginal tease toward a man she loves? As for solitude, why does a lesbian with an “indefinable attraction” make an appearance near the end? Colette gave us not the truth but glossy romanticization. This is evident in the overblown prose: “Ah, how long shall I not thirst for you upon my road!” This comes from the final letter Renee writes to Max. Lucky fellow, Max.

A Bell for Adano –John Hersey
It took a while, but my good will toward this novel slowly ebbed, and then turned to animosity. In his Foreword Hersey states that “Major Victor Joppolo, USA, was a good man” and he closes with “We have need of him. He is our future in the world.” Joppolo is in charge of an Italian town recently liberated from Nazi control. The citizens of Adano come to love this just and compassionate man who embodies, in his decisions, the ideals of democracy. The novel is written in a simple, clear style and is cinematic in that scenes are presented with the minimum of words (often in the form of dialogue). I was on board – until some problems began nagging at me. The Italians are persistently portrayed as childish and overly emotional. The worst example comes in a mass panic over a false “gas attack,” when only Joppolo’s calm intervention stops the flight of the fearful mob. Hersey is treating these people – war survivors – as comic figures. And, in a roundabout way, he allows free rein to a contemptuous attitude. Joppolo is always respectful in his speech and actions, but the other American soldiers are a foul-mouthed bunch who consider the young women of Adano to be subjects of lewd speculation, and they routinely refer to the Italians (often in their presence) as “wop” and “dago.” The straw that broke it for me came in the chapter in which we get the story of how Giorgio died. It was so mishandled, so overwrought, so damn false that I abandoned the book in mid-sentence. Bell would win the Pulitzer Prize in 1945. Apparently Hersey gave the judges – and the American public – the stereotypes and platitudes they wanted at the time.

Unaccustomed Earth – Jhumpa Lahiri
The title story of this collection is by far the best (at least of those I read). A recently widowed father visits his married daughter in Seattle. She has one child and is expecting another. She’s quite willing for her father to move in with her (a tradition in Indian households) and her non-Indian husband (who is away on a business trip) is fine with that idea. But the father is satisfied with his life in a condo in Pennsylvania; he enjoys taking package tours to Europe, and on one he met a woman he starts a relationship with (something he doesn’t want to disclose to Ruma). We’re in the minds of daughter and father, switching between them, and it turns out that Ruma is the one who is lost, needy, dissatisfied; there’s no specific reason given for her discontent, but it comes across as real. During his stay her father asserts his independence; he prepares his own meals and he starts a garden; when he leaves he drives himself to the airport in a rental car. Lahiri has presented us with two character studies in which she gets the feelings of both people right, and she doesn’t try to expand the story beyond its natural limits – it’s complete unto itself. These virtues are missing to some degree in the other four I read. “A Choice of Accommodations” was the worst of the lot. Two unappealing and uninteresting characters meander about emotionally and wind up nowhere (actually, on a bed in a vacant dorm room, in a ridiculous scene). The prose in all these long and ambitious pieces is precise and complete in a dutiful way. I think Lahiri tries very hard, in a dutiful way, to be a great writer. But, for me, her problem has to do with conception – knowing her characters and recognizing where they’re going. That accounts for why I left three stories unread.

Stones for Ibarra – Harriet Doerr
It came as no surprise that the events depicted in these interconnected stories closely parallel those of the author and her husband. In a way, this is a book about death: in the second sentence we learn that doctors have given Richard Everton six more years to live. He has decided to spend that time reviving the fortunes of his grandparents, who owned a copper mine in a remote part of Mexico. He and his wife (from whose point of view we get the story) give up their life in San Francisco and head into the unknown. What they find are the ramshackle remains of a once-grand house. They are resourceful and determined and slowly the house is made into a pleasant place and the mine is again producing. So life in Ibarra works out for the Overtons. But the bulk of the book is not devoted to them. What we get is an honest portrayal of a town and its people, especially their way of thinking and their world view. Chapters are devoted to various characters (such as the unscrupulous Chuy Santos and his red taxi). When Doerr turns to personal issues she does so in an understated, muted way. The major emotion Sara deals with is her sense of doom as she watches the deteriorating condition of her husband. When Sara goes to a nearby town and waits her turn to make a phone call to a doctor in the states, her anxiety is effectively conveyed by having her sit, observe others and count off the minutes. The restraint works here because we’re in Sara’s mind, so intimacy is built in. But it extends to Richard, and as a result he seems to be partially in the shadows. Maybe too much in this book is left unrevealed. What we do get is a mood: the hushed stillness of loss.

The Chequer Board – Nevil Shute
Shute was a born storyteller. Despite all sorts of problems with this novel, it held my attention for almost four hundred pages (and there was even a kick at the end). As for those problems: clumsy construction, overly-long episodes, a somewhat saccharine message. The prose is workmanlike, but that’s okay with me as long as an author gets the emotions right, which Shute does. John Turner is beginning to experience neurological problems stemming from a WWII wound (a shard of metal was embedded in his brain). The doctor’s prognosis is grim: he has less than a year to live. Turner, who takes things impassively, says, “It’ll all be the same in a hundred years.” But he does give thought to how to spend his last months; he tells his wife that there are a few things he needs to clean up. He recalls being in a hospital ward with three other men whose plane was strafed by a German Jerry. The copilot was the only one who wasn’t in trouble with the authorities. Turner was wanted for black market dealings, a paratrooper was up for murder outside a London pub, and an American Negro soldier was to be tried for rape. Since Turner’s eyes are bandaged, the other three are told to read to him, or just talk, and a relationship of sorts develops. It’s these three men that Turner sets out to find – to see how they got on. And how they got on makes up the novel. One character is given the lion’s share of attention – Shute can’t seem to let go of any detail of the pilot’s story. That leaves much less space for the other two (the paratrooper gets the short shrift). As for the message, it’s that one’s color doesn’t matter. But Shute’s approach is simplistic in that all the black soldiers stationed in an English town are noble souls while the Southern whites are virulent racists. When a writer stacks the deck, I resist being pushed in one direction. Still, I liked Turner; I liked the other two men (I never got to know the paratrooper); I liked how Turner and his wife renew their feelings for one another. And I liked the ending, which deftly brings it all full circle.

Cheri – Colette (French)
The novel opens with Lea in bed, Cheri capering about the room, insisting that she give him her pearl necklace: “It looks every bit as well on me as on you — even better!” Cheri then announces that the necklace would be part of his trousseau. Lea, a worldly courtesan, seems unfazed by the news of his marriage. Lea is forty-nine, Cheri is twenty-five, and they’ve had a sexual affair for six years. What, considering the age difference, could she expect, except that he move on? But theirs is a perverted bond, and neither will be able to move on. Cheri (who never had a real mother) has the mentality of a twelve-year-old; he isn’t fit to be anything but an indulged boy. Lea (who never had a child) sees time eroding her beauty; she knows that soon she will be physically unattractive to Cheri (or any other young man), and she can’t accept that loss. After his marriage, when he and Lea are apart, the depth of their mutual dependency asserts itself. In presenting us with an unsolvable dilemma Colette is at times overly-emotional, but her conviction is impressive; it made me wonder if she had experienced such a relationship. Underneath a thin veil of lace this is a brutal and ugly novel. When Lea observes aged courtesans desperately trying to hold onto their youth she sees monsters. And of the lives they lead: “She had a foretaste of the sinful pleasures of the old – little else than a concealed aggressiveness, day-dreams of murder, and the keen recurring hope for catastrophes.” This, she fears, is what awaits her. In the closing scene Lea tells Cheri to go back to his wife: “And you will talk to her like a master, not capriciously, like a gigolo. Quick, quick, run off. . . .” He leaves, and Lea watches him from a window, sees him “throw back his head, look at the spring sky and the chestnut trees in flower and fill his lungs with the fresh air, like a man escaping from prison.” And so, on this hopeful note, the book ends. To be continued, in a novel written six years later.

The Last of Cheri – Colette (French)
Lea makes one appearance, when Cheri visits her. She has given up any attempt to preserve her looks; she’s gray-haired and fat. Though this meeting opens up wounds for her, she seems to have survived quite well without Cheri. He, on the other hand, is little more than a wraith, inexplicable even to himself. This inexplicability makes for exasperating reading. Unlike the other wealthy characters in the book, who live the “bustling life of people with nothing to do,” Cheri has become jaded and stagnant. He’s also celibate; his feelings for his wife (and everyone else) are hostile. What is there about this twenty-nine-year-old man that makes him unable to function? I didn’t buy the answer Colette presents us with – that he’s a lost soul without Lea. Cheri is deranged, not lovesick. On the last pages he’s lying on a divan in a room surrounded by photos of a young Lea: “. . . all the Leas, with their downward gazing eyes, seemed to be showing concern for him. ‘But they only seem to be looking down at me, I know perfectly well. When you sent me away, my Nounoune, what did you think there was left for me after you?’ ” This tortured soul is a fictional aberration, whereas the Lea who has accepted old age is grounded in reality. In the one meeting between the two Lea sees that Cheri is gaunt, and she recommends a little restaurant (while blowing an imitation kiss in honor of the food), along with some advice: “Romanticism, nerves, distaste for life: stomach. The whole lot, simply stomach. Love itself! If one wished to be perfectly sincere, one would have to admit that there are two kinds of love – well-fed and ill-fed. The rest is pure fiction. If only I knew how to write, or to make speeches, my child, what things I could say about that!” These blithe words smack of cruelty, as does the fate that Colette dooms Cheri to. Maybe this book is her day-dream of murder.

Christ Stopped at Eboli – Carlo Levi (Italian)
Christ never proceeded on to the desolate regions of Lucerno, Italy, where Carlo Levi is banished by the Fascist government. Levi stays for one year in the godforsaken town of Gagliano. The peasants there say “We’re not Christians.” “Christian,” to them, means “human being,” and, since they’re thought of (by the world of Christians) not as men but simply as beasts of burden, they do not qualify. This remark reflects the bitter humor – and hopelessness – with which they view their lives. Levi becomes close to the peasantry because he was trained as a doctor; he never practiced, but he has knowledge that the other two doctors in Gagliano don’t. Those two doctors – utterly incompetent and uncaring – are typical of the town’s gentry (those who are in charge). Levi winds up treating the ill, of which there are many. Malaria is rampant; this was a preventable disease, but nothing is done by the government to eradicate it; Rome only impinges on the lives of the peasants in the form of taxation or a demand to serve in the military. Time, in the form of progress, has passed them by; they live in brutish, primitive conditions; their homes are hovels which they share with their goats. The Christianity of the peasants has a strong element of pre-Christian paganism. Their “Black Madonna” is a forbidding, fearsome figure, and they adamantly believe in potions and spells, witches and gnomes. This book, which could be called narrative anthropology, is a close look at a place you would never want to visit (even the landscape is devoid of beauty). But when Levi leaves it is with a feeling of affectionate sorrow. He doesn’t sugar-coat nor ennoble the people of Gagliano, but he recognizes and responds to their humanity.

My Mother’s House/Sido - Colette (French)

Colette wrote these books when she was in her seventies. She looks back at her provincial childhood, and most particularly at her mother. It was a happy childhood, and her mother was a unique person who stirs strong feelings of love and admiration in Colette. These feelings are evoked beautifully in My Mother’s House (by far the stronger of the two books). It’s composed of vignettes that don’t tell a story; they aren’t even chronological. They simply capture moments. Notable is her mother’s embracing of all life – plants, insects, animals, people. She’s able to truly see and appreciate, and we see and appreciate how special her gift is. The descriptions of nature are deeply felt and matter to the story. In the background there’s the shadow of loss. The city was calling to Colette; she will leave the world where she experienced pure happiness. But this is merely suggested in a few sentences; what the author is doing is celebrating a life and a time. In the preface she writes “I have come late to this task. But where could I find a better one for my last?”

Snow Country - Yasunari Kawabata (Japanese)

In this novel about love and sex (in their darker aspects) Kawabata concentrates on his main character’s thoughts – to the exclusion of much else. Though the short sentences impart an open, airy feel, reading this is a claustrophobic experience; one is caged in a gloomy and brooding mind. The book lacks a valid ending; there’s no justification for the inconclusive way in which Kawabata drops matters. A big disappointment from the author of The Sound of the Mountain. 

Go Down, Moses - William Faulkner

Faulkner and I have officially parted company. I hold three of his novels in high esteem – Light in August, The Sound and the Fury and Sanctuary – but I won’t be attempting Absalom, Absalom or anything else by him. “Was” (and why would a story have such a title?) is, with its clothes off, merely a juvenile comedy that falls flat. I had to take its clothes off because Faulkner buries the characters, their situations and the setting in bombast. He works at an intensity level that’s set far too high, and his convoluted prose creates a density that’s almost impenetrable. After abandoning “Was” I turned to “The Bear.” Better, if you place primary value on atmospherics. But that aspect hinders any momentum in the plot, and the slow going had me constantly looking to see how much I had left to read (and it was always more than I hoped for). I finally decided that life is too short to bother with a self-indulgent author who turned what should be pleasurable into a task. With relief and no regrets I put the book aside.

Lanterns and Lances - James Thurber

This was Thurber’s last book. He was in his sixties, almost completely blind (he writes of composing sentences in his mind, so he must have dictated them to someone), and, as he states in one of the pieces, he was a victim of “decreasing inventiveness.” It also seems (from references he makes) that he was drinking a lot. The effects of these factors are evident. The prose is nice, and some of the essays and miscellany are mildly humorous, but there’s a meandering quality, an aimless puttering around. Thurber muses at great length about words, and I can’t believe that many readers would find this of interest. But for me these weaknesses elicited sympathy rather than censure. Thurber was trying to write when there was almost nothing left in the tank. One high spot is “The Wings of Henry James.” Thurber gives his personal responses to James’s work, and in doing so he ranges far and wide. Erudite but not scholarly, this is one of the few literary essay that can be described as entertaining. His review of the stage version of “My Fair Lady” is also outstanding, and I was glad that he got so much pleasure from the show.