FRIDAY: My Book World | Henry James's The American
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My Book World Quinn, Anthony. Freya. New York: Europa, 2017.
This novel, full of twists and turns, could perhaps, only have been written by a Brit—someone trained in reading and writing wordsmithing-worthy work. The plotting is superb. Characterization sparkling. Quinn gives readers the proper clues, subtle though they may be, and astute readers store them away and can say (or not), I knew it. I knew it was him. Two young women, the titular Freya and Nancy, meet at Oxford during WWII and develop a lasting friendship. But it is not an easy alliance. They both date the same Oxford boy who eventually marries his second choice of the two, Nancy. Freya realizes he is a scoundrel, but her friend can’t see it, not at first. There is a pattern of betrayal among these three characters, each deception crescendoing into a climax that may blow your bobby socks off. Spoiler: Only one false note seems to prevail and that is Freya, in the end, realizes she loves her friend, not in a platonic manner, but as a lover. This does not come out of nowhere; Quinn does subtly, perhaps too subtly, drop breadcrumb clues along the way, but there seems to be no inner struggle for Freya, no clues to the character herself that she could be a lesbian. Others might argue that the author does inform. After all, Freya puts career ahead of all; she wishes not to marry (while having lots of sex with men) or have children; she blasts off into her life in any direction she wants with little regard for family or friends. She only has one other physical relationship with a woman, and it is in the context of a drunken orgy in which any woman might have sex with another woman. Again, very subtle. And perhaps it is as it should be. The period is late 1940s to late 1960s, a time of awakening, an explorative era in which women, even adventurous ones like Freya, may not know who they are inside and must be whacked up the side of the head by life itself to understand who they are. NEXT FRIDAY: My Book World | Henry James's The American
TOMORROW: My Book World | Anthony Quinn's Freya
FRIDAY: My Book World | Anthony Quinn's Freya, a Novel
FRIDAY: My Book World | Anthony Quinn's Freya, a Novel
My Book World Wouk, Herman. Sailor and Fiddler: Reflections of a 100-year-Old Author. New York: Simon, 2016.
The most fascinating aspect of this book may be indeed be Wouk’s age (b. May 27, 1915 and d. May 17, 2019, making him 10 days short of 104). One of the keys to his longevity may be that he never stops writing. In this slim tome, he relates the stories of each one of his books and how they come to be, but along with each one, he also shares where he is at the time. For example, while working on one novel for seven years, he and his wife buy a house in the Caribbean and reside there with their sons in paradise until he is finished. The book is a great way to become acquainted with his oeuvre if one isn’t already. NEXT FRIDAY: My Book World | *Anthony Quinn's Novel, Freya (*British author, not the late American actor)
TOMORROW: My Book World | Herman Wouk's Sailor and Fiddler: Reflections of a 100-Year-Old Author
FRIDAY: My Book World | Herman Wouk's Sailor and Fiddler: Reflections of a 100-Year-Old Author
FRIDAY: My Book World | Herman Wouk's Sailor and Fiddler: Reflections of a 100-Year-Old Author
My Book World Schumacher, Michael. Francis Ford Coppola: A Filmmaker’s Life. New York: Crown, 1999.
If readers are fans of both film and director Coppola, this book is an embarrassment of riches—at least as far as it takes us, through 1998 when the book comes out. One may not realize, for example, how easy the 1970s seem for Coppola, succeeding beyond his wildest dreams with The Godfather and Apocalypse Now. The next twenty years are more arduous, and Coppola loses his credibility at times. He wishes to be more of an artiste, making films that appeal to him but perhaps not the public at large—or the studios. Even when he makes a big-budget, mass-appeal film, he is almost always at loggerheads with studio execs over scripts and, of course, money. He is a creative man, who also finances, for a time, his own studio, and even publishes a literary magazine, Zoetrope: All Story, which still exists today—not to mention a number of other enterprises including a winery. He ends the nineties having made enough money to dig himself out of debt and establish an independent life. Although he continues to make film, it is at his own pleasure. One has to admire that. NEXT FRIDAY: My Book World | Herman Wouk's Sailor and Fiddler: Reflections of a 100-Year-Old Author
TOMORROW: My Book World | Michael Schumacher's Francis Ford Coppola: A Filmmaker's Life
FRIDAY: My Book World | Michael Schumacher's Francis Ford Coppola: A Filmmaker's Life
FRIDAY: My Book World | Michael Schumacher's Francis Ford Coppola: A Filmmaker's Life
My Book World Athill, Diana. Somewhere Towards the End: A Memoir. New York: Norton, 2009. Diana Athill lived to be 101. She published this book at age ninety, ninety-one. An editor for a long time, she writes here and writes convincingly of her life, not only her old age but her younger life as well: her loves and losses, her miscarriage near menopause, her decision very early on that she doesn’t much care for children (though she mourns the child she loses, demonstrating a complexity of her own character). Somewhere towards the end of this thin tome, Athill states, So an individual life is interesting enough to merit examination, and my own is the only one I really know (as Jean Rhys, faced with this same worry, always used to say), and if it is to be examined, it should be examined as honestly as is possible within the examiner’s inevitable limitations. To do it otherwise is pointless—and also makes very boring reading, as witness many autobiographies by celebrities of one sort or another” (181). Athill’s longevity may, in part, be due to an active life, one in which she continues to learn how to do new things—not well or professionally, perhaps—but something novel nonetheless. One among many lessons we all might learn from her as we all slouch toward that same ending.
NEXT FRIDAY: My Book World | Michael Shumacher's Francis Ford Coppola: A Filmmaker’s Life
TOMORROW: My Book World | Diana Athill's Somewhere Towards the End: A Memoir
FRIDAY: My Book World | Diana Athill's Somewhere Towards the End: A Memoir
FRIDAY: My Book World | Diana Athill's Somewhere Toward the End: A Memoir
My Book World Sedgwick, John. From the River to the Sea: The Untold Story of the Railroad War That Made the West. New York: Avid, 2021.
If you’ve ever driven on an Interstate highway in the western United States—at posted speeds of 80 mph or faster, and people do zoom faster—it can seem as if you’re passing through a Disneyland sort of panorama. Mountains. Red arches. The occasional evergreen—with your AC cranked down low. In John Sedgwick’s book, however, one learns what it was like to traverse that terrain as a railroad builder, including the workers themselves. Sedgwick traces the lives and work of two men—Strong erecting the Santa Fe and Palmer, the Rio Grande—who make “river to the sea” travel possible beginning in the late 1880s. This journey includes side trips by way of chapters devoted, for example, to the beloved Harvey House hotels, the first chain of its kind to provide bed, beverage, and breakfast along the way. Always, however, Sedgwick returns to the struggle these two men mount against the elements, terrain, and government (state and federal) but mostly against each other, to open up the West to the established civilization in the East. It is quite a ride, and Sedgwick ensures that you do not miss a minute of it. NEXT FRIDAY: My Book World | Diana Athill's Somewhere Towards the End
TOMORROW: My Book World | John Sedgwick's From the River to the Sea: The Untold Story of the Railroad War That Made the West
FRIDAY: My Book World | John Sedgwick's From the River to the Sea: The Untold Story of the Railroad War That Made the West
FRIDAY: My Book World | John Sedgwick's From the River to the Sea: The Untold Story of the Railroad War That Made The West
My Book World Hosseini, Khaled. A Thousand Splendid Suns. New York: Riverhead, 2007.
Hosseini, author of The Kite Runner, limns this portrait of two Afghanistan women that is both tragic and uplifting. Enemies at first, because they are married to the same abusive man, Mariam and Laila slowly realize their only way through life is to join together as friends. Both women are abused, one as a child, and both after their marriages. All this occurs over decades through the Soviet occupation and then the Taliban. The story ends just as the Americans enter the scene. Surprises? The landscape. One is tempted to think that the entire country of Afghanistan is as dusty and dry as the movies and news videos that emerge, but Hosseini makes clear to readers that there are wet cycles, that there exist beautiful, mountainous vistas, as well. Another surprise: how misogynistic and cruel some Afghani men are, the women’s husband being a prime example. As the women toil to raise their children (a childless Mariam becomes a grandmother figure), they form a family structure of their own. After both suffering great losses, the story does end on a truly bright note: “But mostly, Mariam is in Laila’s own heart, where she shines with the bursting radiance of a thousand suns” (366). Hosseini possesses a strong understanding of the human condition. NEXT FRIDAY: John Sedgwick's From the River to the Sea: The Untold Story of the Railroad War That Made the West
TOMORROW: My Book World | John Sedgwick's From the River to the Sea: The Untold Story of the Railroad War That Made the West
FRIDAY: My Book World | John Sedwick's From the River to the Sea: The Untold Story of the Railroad War That Made the West
FRIDAY: My Book World | John Sedgwick's From the River to the Sea: The Untold Story of the Railroad War That Made the West
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AUTHOR
Richard Jespers is a writer living in Lubbock, Texas, USA. See my profile at Author Central:
http://amazon.com/author/rjespers Archives
January 2022
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