The Gendarme by Mark Mustian

Part mystery, part historical fiction and part love story, The Gendarme is a short book about many things.  The story takes place in two timelines as the 92- year- old protagonist endures the short remainder of his life following the removal of a brain tumor.  Emmet is an American Turkish immigrant who lost all prior memory of his life after a head injury sustained during WWI. When his brain tumor is removed, Emmet’s memory seems to slowly return.

In his dreams, he is transported to the past where he appears as a gendarme forcing a group of Armenians into Syria during a grueling and violent death march. Emmet relives his crime, but also his unlikely romance with a young Armenian girl. This girl, forgotten in the aftermath of his injury, obsesses him once more in his old age, and as more is successively experienced in his dreams, he is driven to find out her fate.

While Emmet is pursuing his dream life, his real life continues in the contemporary world. As his mental state deteriorates, he eventually needs to be institutionalized, and his daughters are forced to make arrangements for his day to day care and support. In this timeline, readers experience his confusion in the sense that we, too, are unable to decipher what is real and what is dream or hallucination. Emmet’s fear and paranoia increase the more his dream life develops until he can no longer distinguish one from the other.

Mustian does not always make clear distinctions for the reader either. After finishing the book, I would periodically have to call yet another part of the plot into question until it was no longer possible to depend on any part of it. Even the events in the contemporary timeline are questionable. Reality deteriorates for Emmet while we’ve been following him, so we are drawn into his illusions just as he is. We know there is something from his past that has been unlocked in his memory, but we don’t know how much of it is real and how much of it is construction. The conclusion satisfies, but by then readers will feel themselves at the mercy of the same feverish impulse controlling Emmet in his increasingly irrational push to find what he remembers as the love of his life – and perhaps a type of redemption.

We can’t call Emmet an unreliable narrator because he isn’t the one telling story. However, the narration does objectively follow his perceptions and emotions, so we experience the story as Emmet does. You’ll just have to decide what to believe and whether questioning reality is always worthwhile.

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Forgotten Country by Catherine Chung

The Korean peninsula has inspired some great novels recently, including The Ginseng Hunter by Jeff Talarigo, a poetic and harrowing portrayal of life on the border between China and North Korea, Please Look After Mom by Kyung-Sook Shin (previously blogged), and The Orphan Master’s Son by Adam Johnson. Each gives varied views from within the Korean culture.

Now Catherine Chung has written an engrossing story of two sisters born in South Korea, who come with their parents to Michigan as young girls, grow up, and move out into their own lives. There are family secrets between the sisters and between parents and children, which create tension as the story unfolds. Janie, the elder sister, was cautioned to protect Hannah when she was born because sisters can “disappear” (one family secret) and she takes this seriously. Hannah, studying in Chicago, suddenly goes missing and Janie and parents panic.

Eventually Janie traces Hannah to California and informs her that their father is ill, Mom and Dad have sold their home and are returning to Korea for treatment, but Hannah needn’t come: she isn’t needed. Older sister is very conflicted about telling this untruth, but wants revenge for the pain Hannah has put them all through. Meanwhile Hannah has her own painful secret from childhood which she thinks Janie knows about but has ignored.

In Korea, the beloved father receives alternative treatment, seems to improve, and Janie learns more about her parents and why they left Korea from the stream of visiting family and friends. When Hannah arrives, an uneasy truce settles over the sisters as they and their mother disbelievingly watch their father slowly dying. I found this novel beautifully written with spare prose and enlightening cultural details.

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Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri

These stories by Jhumpa Lahiri are so quiet and subtle that, as one reviewer put it, “you forget that you are reading.”  These stories could be happening to you, or your next door neighbor.  The fact that many of the characters have Indian names or come from a different culture only adds richness to the story of their struggles, sometimes triumphant and sometimes humiliating, to navigate their way through life’s challenges.

The point of view changes with each story, taking us into the minds of characters with different ages and circumstances.  Often, the main details of the story unfold as we observe them through the eyes of a peripheral character.  In “When Mr. Pirzada Came to Dine,” a young girl from a privileged Indian-American family gradually comes to understand the ways in which the Indian-Pakistani war is affecting the people in her life.  In “Mrs. Sen’s,” a young boy is cared for after school by an Indian woman who is far from home and trying to become familiar with a new culture.

Although many of the stories deal with the dissonances between American and Indian culture, there are universal themes throughout.  In “A Temporary Matter,” we observe with compassion a young couple who are grieving over the loss of their first baby.  We see how complicated a process grieving is, how each of us grieves in our own way, and how a shared grief may draw us together or push us apart.  The title story, “Interpreter of Maladies” deals with a middle-aged man’s quest to bring some meaning into his unsatisfying life.  Isn’t this what we all do?  We try to interpret our maladies, understand what ails us and what ails the other people in our lives.  Only then can we find a “cure,” if such a thing can be found.

I cannot think of any book or collection of stories I have read that more accurately captures this process.  This is Lahiri’s first book.  If all her books are this wonderful, I want to read them all.

See my colleague Clare B.’s review of Lahiri’s Unaccustomed Earth.

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White Teeth by Zadie Smith

Are we ruled by fate or chance?  White Teeth is a funny and unusual look at race relations in London which raises this question repeatedly.  It begins with one character’s failed attempt at suicide, which leads to his meeting his second wife, who is almost 30 years younger and half a foot taller than him.  The rest of the story rambles through decades describing decisions which are made purposely or by merely tossing a coin.  All of these choices change the course of someone’s entire life in unexpected ways.

The main characters at the heart of this novel are two men who served together in WWII, one Muslim from Bangladesh and one British.  Their friendship survives the war and the book follows the two men through the years of marriage, children, and the ups and downs of their careers.  The two end up living close to one another in the melting pot area of North London in the 1970’s and 80’s; and their wives and children become a sort of extended family.  Samad Iqbal has an arranged marriage with a younger woman which has its ups and downs.  His twin boys, Magid and Millat, grow up watching their parents argue until Samad sends Magid back to Bangladesh with the hopes that he will follow the traditional ways.  Instead, he becomes enamored with the West, while his brother Millat, who stayed in London, joins a militant Muslim gang.  Meanwhile, Archie Jones’ second marriage to a Jamaican woman produces Irie, a bi-racial daughter about the same age as Samad’s twins.  Irie struggles growing up with little direction or help from her parents. She longs to go to Jamaica to discover her mother’s roots, but also considers herself English.

The story is rather long and meandering, yet I enjoyed the whole thing.  The author writes dialog so well you can almost hear the various accents of different Londoners. The interaction and reactions of all the different races, cultures, religions, and ethnicities are described, but there is no effort to pronounce one right or wrong. The story is wry and yet somehow hopeful, and gives us a fresh look at how the races interact in today’s society.

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Girl in Translation by Jean Kwok

I am always attracted to stories about immigrants moving to a new country and trying to fit in, so I am surprised that I somehow missed this book when it was first released.  I was really intrigued when a friend recommended it and it did not disappoint!

When Kimberly Chang and her mother arrive in New York City after the death of her father, they are grateful for the help given to them by her mother’s sister. Kim’s aunt and uncle paid for the trip from Hong Kong and gave them money to pay Kim’s mother’s medical bills. They had also promised to help them find an apartment and give her mother a job.  What happened when they arrived was shocking, however.  The apartment they were given was in a building that had been condemned.  It was full of roaches, mice, and had no working heat.  Her mother was put to work in her sister’s sewing factory, but was paid only pennies for each piece of work completed.  Money was taken out to pay back her sister for their trip out of Hong Kong and for rent.  Kim had to help her work after school and evenings every day just so her mother would make her quota and have a little money left for them to eat on.

At the same time, Kim was working very hard to make it through school.  In Hong Kong she had always been top of her class. Now she struggled to understand enough English to pass.  Over the next few years, Kim managed to not only pass, but to get accepted at an exclusive Prep school in the city. Every day she is amazed at the privileged lives of her classmates and struggles to hide her living conditions from her teachers and her friends.

Kwok’s description of a modern day sweatshop is both shocking and familiar.  The hard part is realizing that she is talking about modern day, not 100 years ago.  The author does a wonderful job of conveying Kimberly’s initial struggles to understand the language by writing what Kimberly thinks she hears, instead of what the person actually says.  As the book goes on, the translations become less frequent because her English has improved.   The book also gives an accurate portrayal of what many immigrant children go through, living a duel life between school and home, and frequently being responsible for all of the paperwork necessary for life.   It is hard on the child to be the only person who speaks English. In this book, it sometimes feels like Kim is protecting her mother, while other times she seems to manipulate her. In spite of all that, the book is not depressing.  It is a wonderful story about a little girl of amazing personal strength.

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The Writer as Migrant by Ha Jin

When the tanks of the Chinese army rolled into Beijing’s Tiananmen Square on June fourth, 1989, Jin Xuefei, a Chinese student at the Brandeis University in Massachusetts, decided that he could not return home. During his years in the army, he had been told that the main task of a soldier was to protect the people of China, so when the military turned on the students in the square it shocked him. Jin Xuefei stayed in America, began writing in English and eventually became known by his pen name Ha Jin, a winner of the National Book Award and a part of American literary life.

The list of authors living abroad – not infrequently in exile – is long and remarkable and includes Dante, Joseph Conrad, James Joyce, T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, Samuel Beckett, Isaac Bashevis Singer, Vladimir Nabokov, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Milan Kundera, Salman Rushdie, and V.S. Naipaul – just to mention a few.

Some of these authors left not only their home country – willingly or unwillingly – but also their native language, a home in itself. However, the migrant writer’s situation is complex and multifaceted, and while it’s true that the loss of country, language, and culture will have an enormous impact on an author, the same writer will also gain something, namely a whole new existence.

In The Writer as Migrant, Ha Jin attempts to capture the essence of this kind of existence. His three essays are short, rich in content and they are rewarding reads. He asks: can an author living abroad be a spokesperson for the country and people left behind? What is the fundamental nature of language and writing? What constitutes a homeland? The essays that evolve from these questions and others display a poetic, educated, and uncluttered mind, capable of embracing the complexities of the issues involved.

Ha Jin makes many references to works of literature in his essays, as he believes that “the usefulness and beauty of literature lies in its capacity to illuminate life.” Thus, The Writer as Migrant isn’t just a book about authors and the world of books – it is a book about life at large. Every human being is a migrant of sorts, and no matter where the journey leads, the past does not go away – “so,” Ha Jin says, “we must strive to use parts of our past to facilitate our journeys. As we travel along, we should also imagine how to rearrange the landscapes of our envisioned homelands.” In other words, The Writer as Migrant can be a book for any reader.

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Pigeon English by Stephen Kelman

“I have a special place in my heart for debut novels and am pleased to recommend another, this time from British author Stephen Kelman.  His manuscript was the focus of a fierce bidding war among publishers and was released earlier this year in the United Kingdom to glowing reviews (an adaptation has also been commissioned by the BBC).   After reading it, I can understand why.

The hero of the story is eleven year old Harrison Opuku.  Harri to his friends, he is a recent arrival to England from Ghana.  Harri is still young enough to believe he can influence the world around him by whether or not he steps on cracks in the sidewalk, but at the same time old enough to be recruited by neighborhood gangs as a potential member.  It is this juxtaposition of innocence and experience that I found so interesting and which reminded me of another well received British novel, Little Bee.

The story begins with the murder of a local teenager and is told from Harri’s point of view. He liked the victim and, along with some of his friends, turns detective to try and solve the mystery of who perpetrated this crime. I quickly became very fond of Harri and especially loved his musings on British culture and British English (again, shades of Little Bee).  Harri loves his family, has a crush on his classmate, Poppy, and just wants to be happy and good. But he’s not living in a world that makes that easy—and the tension in this book comes from watching as Harri attempts to navigate a dangerous world he is too young to fully understand.

The book was just put on the Man Booker prize long-list of nominated titles.”

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Just Like Us: the True Story of Four Mexican Girls Coming of Age in America by Helen Thorpe

Start with four best friends, all born in Mexico and living in Colorado. Two have official immigration papers. Two don’t.  Then read as the quartet reaches the age of legal majority. The set up sounds tailor-made for a case study, but author Helen Thorpe is a storyteller, not a social scientist.

Her political agenda compromises her objectivity from the start, and an unexpected real-life plot twist pushes Thorpe from an unbiased observer to
an active participant in the girls’ struggle for legal acceptance. Then, once the author dispenses with all pretension of journalistic detachment, her observations become suspiciously omniscient. Is her portrayal of the girls’ feelings based on things they told her? Or her own inferences? Thorpe isn’t clear and her sources aren’t saying. Because of their precarious legal positions, they have to stay anonymous.

However, the narration that makes this book such a questionable work of social research makes it an engaging coming-of-age story for adult and young adult readers alike.  Any immigrant or first-generation American will identify with the way the girls deftly toggle between two cultural worlds. Readers who are neither will still recognize the girls’ typical teen angst over being in limbo between child an adult, if not their unique struggle to sort through their  feelings about  being  raised in America, yet not wholly American.

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Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri

Normally I do not read short stories.   I enjoy a long, detailed novel far better.  The stories of Jhumpa Lahiri are the exception for me.  I cannot say enough about this extraordinary writer.  Her debut  collection of stories, Interpreter of Maladies, won the Pulitzer Prize,  the PEN/Hemingway Award and The New Yorker Debut of the Year.

Lahiri’s most recent work, Unaccustomed Earth, is another collection of short stories, all with the common thread of adjustment.  Each story focuses on Bengali immigrants and their struggle to retain their heritage while adapting to life in a confusing new land.   She principally examines the conflict between the younger generation who has not lived in India, and their parents who cling to familiar traditions.

I particularly enjoyed the second part of the book, “Hema and Kaushik”, a trio of stories.  In the first story, their families live together for a short time while they are both young.  At first Hema’s family is overjoyed to have the family stay.  But over the weeks, the situation becomes unbearable.  When Kaushik’s family finally leave,  his mother terribly ill, the families loose touch.  The next two  stories trace each of their lives, their struggles and joys, until Hema and Kaushik meet again, unexpectedly,  in Europe.

Lahiri has a great talent for painting vivid images with her words, while writing in a straightforward manner.

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The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears by Dinaw Mengestu

Do you ever hear about books on NPR that you immediately squirrel away in your brain for future reference only to forget every identifying feature?  I remembered this one long enough to recommend it for purchase when I got to work, but I must have forgotten all about it immediately afterwards.  Almost two years later, I stumbled upon a lonely copy in the stacks, and, far adrift on the waters of my memory, I heard a faint call for attention. The book seemed to sharpen into focus as I pulled the slim volume from the shelf and said to myself, “Oh yeah, I remember this .”

The book caught my attention initially because it’s set in my hometown of Washington, D.C., but also because of its nuanced treatment of its subject: African refugees adapting to life in the United States. Whatever show I was listening to was exploring the topic of the “Lost Children of Sudan” – a generation of immigrant children who settled in America after a perilous flight from war and genocide. These children are now adults, and their stories are beginning to be told by authors like Mengestu who immigrated from Africa at a very young age.

Mengestu’s book is not about Sudanese-Americans, but his characters have similar backgrounds.  Sefa, the main character, fled Ethiopia as a young teen in fear for his life after his father was murdered by revolutionaries. Together with his two expatriot friends, Sefa struggles to come to terms with unrootedness in a society that seems to have promised more than it was capable of delivering.  However, Mengestu avoids turning his novel into political commentary on a particular nation or group; his characters do not represent entire cultures. Instead, they are individuals coping with forces that shaped them in Africa, and which, perhaps surprisingly, continue to define them in America.

Sefa’s corner store is located in a run-down part of D.C. that is beginning to alter under the influence of gentrification.  As expensive houses appear and the old residents are pushed out by the new, the neighborhood’s racial and class structure is disrupted. Although Sefa takes no active role in the events, he becomes involved by virtue of his semi-romantic relationship with one of the new well-off white residents.  These developments add to his sense of insecurity, and help highlight what has become the central motivation of his life: a desire for stability. Sefa contrasts with his fellow displaced Ethiopians in that he recognizes his disconnectedness from his homeland as well as his adopted home.  In an interesting scene, Sefa visits his uncle’s apartment building which has been transformed into an insular village of unrooted Ethiopians who have been unable or unwilling to assimilate into American culture.

The book has its flaws. The pacing and transitions are sometimes confusing, and not all characters are as interesting as Sefa himself. Mengestu is strongest when writing about the group of three African friends coping with their new existence. One gets the sense of them as complex individuals who are intelligent and open-minded. The greatest accomplishment of the novel is that by crafting such well-realized individuals, Mengetsu makes an entire people who are characterized so strongly by “otherness” more familiar.

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