Last Ten Books Read: XXVII
(In order of completion)
1. Stacy Schiff. “Cleopatra.” I had liked “Vera” a great deal (See “Last Ten… XXVI), so I wondered what Schiff would do here. I learned Cleopatra wasn’t Egyptian. (She was Macedonian.) I enjoyed hearing about all the throne-seeking children killing their parents (and vice-versa) and sisters killing their brothers (and vice-versa), but the problem is we don’t know much about Cleopatra herself and most of what we do comes from a couple bios written a couple thousand years ago, each with its own agenda, of which Schiff is skeptical. She hasn’t uncovered any new facts I recall, but she does deliver old ones through a contemporary pro-feminist lens.
2. Rachel Aviv. “Strangers to Ourselves.” A scattered history of approaches to mental illness through a collection of magazine pieces by a quality journalist, who was herself hospitalized, at age six, for an eating disorder. That account struck me as the most powerful but the collection didn’t build upon it. No thesis was spelled out; perhaps there is none to be had. Try talk; try drugs; keep fingers crossed.
3, Elfriede Jelinek. “The Piano Teacher.” I had liked “Lust” a great deal (See “Last Ten… XXVI), so I wondered what Jelinek would do here. This was also excellent. About mid- way through, I realized it was funny. So I wondered if “Lust” had been funny too and I had missed it. But then “Teacher” became intense and brutal and I realized I had been temporarily misdirected. (It did make me curious as to what the movie was like.)
4. Kazuo Ishiguro. “Never Let Me Go.” I can’t remember a thing about this book. It was on the NYT’s top 100 books of the 21st century so it must be something, but my memory has been over run by its exposure to the (also Japanese-in-focus) film “Perfect Days.” So, sorry, I can’t help you.
5. Carolyn Woods Eisenberg. “Fire and Rain.” An exhaustively researched and undeviating condemnation of the Nixon-Kissinger war on Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia (with some blame, less clearly spelled out, attributable to Russia and China). Politics and personal power predominate over all. Talk about war crimes.
6. Frank Olaseski. “The Five Invitations.” A Zen priest type guy I know suggested it would change my life. That didn’t happen, but it was a good enough collection of Buddhist-inspired wisdoms, some familiar, some not. I will add it the stack of Buddhistic how-to volumes I keep beside the bed to kick-start my morning meditations.
7. Han Kang. “The Vegetarian.” Recommended by the same woman at the café who’d recommended Jelinek – another Nobel Prize winner of whom I’d previously never heard. This was also excellent. Direct and powerful. I have another novel by Kang on order as we speak.
8. Patrick Haden Keefe. “Say Nothing.” This was on the NYT Top 100 list too. (I should note that since only a quarter of the century has passed, it can be presumed three-quarters of this 100 won’t make the final cut.) I had read a portion in the “New Yorker” years ago and meant to read the book. Found a used softcover in Moe’s – and can’t honestly say it was worth the wait. It was okay but shook no earth.
9. Edward P. Jones. “The Known World.” Number four of the Top 100, and the highest ranked one I hadn’t already read. Informative, moving, heart-wrenching, innovative. You sit back periodically and utter “Wow!” (My only criticism is that Jones didn’t place a list of characters in the front of the book like Ferrante did in “My Brilliant Friend” (the list’s Number One). It’s at the end in a Glossary, so I kept forgetting who was who, and, by the time I found it, was too late to do me any good.
10. Sigrid Nunez. “The Vulnerables.” This is the sixth book I’ve read by Nunez and the least pleasing. It’s her Covid-novel and while it shares commonalities with other Nunez books (unsatisfactory men, more than satisfactory animals), and has some clear thinking and classy paragraphs, it reads more like a collection of thoughts (and quotations) she picked up along the way to a fleshed-out novel and strung like ornaments on a scrawny tree. Near the end, Nunez postulates the novel may have run its course. Things may be too troubled and complex for it to provide relief or value. But I had just read Jones, so I think that’s more her problem.