Who: After stints as an actor, singer and storyteller, Lucy Strange became a secondary school teacher and writer of middle-grade historical fiction. Her first book, The Secret of Nightingale Wood, received high praise and her second, Our Castle by the Sea, is the subject of this review.
What: It’s 1939, and England is on the cusp of World War II. Twelve-year-old Petra (Pet) and her family — older sister Magda (Mags), her pa and mother (Mutti) — are lighthouse keepers in the coastal village of Stonegate. Unlike her spirited sister, Pet isn’t particularly brave and is given to believing in myths and legends.
As war encroaches upon their small community, Pet’s family gets caught up in a plot that threatens to tear them apart. Mutti, a German immigrant, is packed off to an internment camp for “enemy aliens” as a matter of national security. Mags becomes increasingly secretive and evasive, and her pa is distracted and distant. It is up to Pet to muster every ounce of courage to uncover the truth and do what she can to set things right.
Why: There is much to unpack in this beautifully written, atmospheric novel — it blends mystery, intrigue and family dynamics with a protagonist, Pet, who starts out quiet and timid but because of the extraordinary circumstances she gets thrown into, becomes a lass of steely resolve by the novel’s end.
The story begins with the telling of a local legend of four sisters, who traded their souls for the safe return of their father lost at the treacherous sandbank, the Wyrm. They were turned into stone when their wish was fulfilled. This myth, the self-sacrifice and bravery of the girls, is embedded in Pet’s psyche and colours her perception and interpretation of events in the book. I love how Strange weaves myth into the fabric of the story because history and identity as a people and culture is as much about real events as it is about the myths and legends passed down through the ages.
The book affords wonderfully nuanced explorations on the themes of love, loyalty and sacrifice, and the way fear and racism can drive a person to do crazy things; World War II is the perfect foil for this. Through the actions of her parents, Pet observes the price of true sacrifice. When acts of sabotage start happening in the village, Pet learns the painful lesson that sometimes, people are not who they may seem, and the enemy within is often more insidious than the enemy without.
The author is masterful at evoking the time and place, and in bringing out the gamut of emotions portrayed in the book through her rich, sensitive prose. Meanwhile, Pet as a character is endearing and wise beyond her years. The build-up of the mystery and suspense makes it a delicious page-turner.
Quotable quote: “If you were torn between loyalty to your country and love for your family, what would you choose?”
Verdict: An evocative, richly rendered historical fiction full of depth of characters and plot (9/10)
The biography, rightly, stands as a sub-genre of its own within publishing and literary circles. At once a descriptive report as well as a work of psychoanalysis, the biography at its best digs deeply into the motivations and thinking of another person, replete with their biases, prejudices and preconceptions, to edify and illuminate thought processes. They are, therefore, windows into the minds of others providing explanation and justification for their actions in the tangible world. As a species, we have always been interested in the lives of others. Although no biography offers a complete perspective of the mental workings of another individual, they nevertheless, provide valuable insights into their hows and whys. The following titles are our picks.
Leonardo da Vinci by Walter Isaacson (RM59.95) Walter Isaacson, the acclaimed biographer whose previous subjects include Albert Einstein, Benjamin Franklin, and Steve Jobs, adds to his list of geniuses who changed the world with his 2017 biography of Leonardo da Vinci. Now available in paperback, Isaacson masterfully weaves the maestro’s artistic and scientific life to reveal a man whose passion for one is intrinsically linked to the other. Drawing from thousands of pages from Leonardo’s notebooks and contemporary discoveries of his life and work, Isaacson’s portrait is one of a misfit fundamentally defined by his burning curiosity in the subjects of anatomy, engineering, art and theatre. This new work by Isaacson illuminates the importance of questioning received wisdom whilst keeping an open and imaginative mind as the key ingredients of creativity.
Serving the Servant: Remembering Kurt Cobain by Danny Goldberg (RM118.90) Is 25 years long enough to determine if Cobain was a genius or not? Was Smells Like Teen Spirit an anthem for a generation of disaffected youth or simply the angst-ridden ejaculation of a bored cynic? Was he a genius or did he simply die young and popular? The debate over the legitimacy of Nirvana’s lead man continues to rage, but what is undeniable is his status as a cultural icon further cemented by the act of his suicide. Although Cobain is typically portrayed as a reluctant individual caught in the tailspin of his own rising star, Goldberg, Nirvana’s manager from 1991 to 1994, adds a new dimension to the story. In Serving the Servants, Goldberg draws on his own interaction with Cobain as well as on previously unreleased interviews to illuminate Cobain’s brilliance, compassion and ambition, and sheds new light on why Cobain endures till today.
Ernest Hemingway by Mary Dearborn (RM84.95) Few writers are celebrated with as much bravado as machismo as Ernest Hemingway whose CV includes stints as a war-time ambulance driver and other intrigues, big game safari hunter, amateur boxer, inveterate drinker and womaniser, and writer. Even fewer bring the lessons and virtues (if they can be called virtues) from these preoccupations to bear on their writing, and far fewer can make something as beautiful and heart-wrenching as Hemingway does in his novels and short-stories. Mary Dearborn’s 2017 book is the first full biography of Ernest Hemingway in more than 15 years and the first to be written by a woman. Drawing on never-before-used material, Dearborn creates a rich and nuanced portrait of this enigmatic and flawed artist, who was driven and doomed by the insatiable demons that haunted him throughout his life.
The Pianist from Syria: A Memoir by Aeham Ahmad (RM75.50) A memoir of a war-refugee who escapes from war-torn Syria to Germany, The Pianist is a contemporary account of the continuing and lingering impact of the conflict in the Middle East. Aeham Ahmad was born the son of a blind violinist and carpenter who taught him the piano and a love for music from an early age. A second-generation refugee — his grandparents and father were forced to flee Israel and seek refuge from the Israeli–Palestinian conflict — Aeham’s family built a life in Yarmouk, an unofficial camp to more than 160,000 Palestinian refugees in Damascus where family and music were their only haven. However, any plans to wait out the war in their new home would be disrupted by a new conflict in Syria, forcing Aeham to leave his family behind as he sought to find a new place for them to call home and build a better life. Told in a raw and poignant voice, The Pianist is a gripping portrait of one man’s search for sanctuary and of the bond between father and son.
The Valedictorian of Being Dead by Heather Armstrong (RM89.90) The Valedictorian is an honest and irreverent memoir by Heather B. Armstrong of her experience as one of only a few people to participate in an experimental treatment for depression involving 10 rounds of a chemically induced coma approximating brain death. Armstrong has struggled with depression for years, but when she hit rock bottom in 2016, she decided to risk everything by participating in the experimental clinical trial. In her memoir, she recalls the torturous 18 months of suicidal depression she endured and the month-long experimental study in which doctors used propofol anesthesia to quiet all brain activity for a full fifteen minutes before bringing her back from a flatline — effectively a brain reset. The experience was taxing for both Armstrong and her family, and seems to have worked since she has yet to experience an episode of suicidal depression since. Disarmingly honest, self-deprecating, and scientifically fascinating, The Valedictorian brings to light a groundbreaking new treatment for depression.
This article appears in the May 2019 issue of FireFlyz, the in-flight magazine of Firefly airlines.
Who: Taylor Jenkins Reid is the author of The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo, One True Loves, Maybe in Another Life, After I Do, and Forever, Interrupted. Her novels have been Indie Next Picks, chosen by Book of the Month, and featured in People, US Weekly, Entertainment Weekly, Good Morning America, and more. Her newest novel, Daisy Jones and The Six, is a New York Times bestseller. She lives in Los Angeles.
What:Daisy Jones and the Six is a fictional written oral history of a similarly fictional rock band inspired by the story of Stevie Nicks and Fleetwood Mac. In Reid’s novel, Daisy Jones and the Six hit the heights of rock ‘n’ roll stardom when they release their album, Aurora, which becomes an instant rock classic. All this unfolds in the 1970s where sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll went hand-in-hand with one another, and where rock stars were creatures larger than life.
The protagonists of the novel are the book’s eponymous Daisy Jones and the lead singer of The Six, Billy Dunne. Both incredibly talented musicians in their own right, they form an instant distaste for one another when their production company suggests a collaborative effort. So not only have they been assigned the unhappy task of working with each other, but they also have to wrestle with ghosts from their past which are always looming just off-camera.
Other members of the band and associated individuals are also brought into the narrative to flesh out flesh out the details, and to bring to bear their own recollections of the event — not all of which mesh to form a coherent and common narrative. But amidst all the unreliable narrations, a picture of the roller-coaster life of a 1970s rock star emerges, and it is a fun ride.
Why:Daisy Jones and The Six combines clichés within clichés: warring virtuoso front-(wo)men of a stellar band; eccentric bandmates who swing between the extremes of love and hate for the band and all it stands for; copious amount of drugs on The Sunset Strip and wherever else the band might be touring; etc. It’s a trope that’s well-used in the movie business, but not so much in novels, and that’s part of what makes it a compelling read. It is a stylish novel that captures the hedonism of the 1970s in all its glorious technicolour, and a compulsive page-turner.
Reid has a good ear for the way interviewees speak while on record, and the transition from one voice to the next is seamless. It’s clear that each character has a fully-formed personality: the music wonk Billy Dunne, the devil-may-care but nevertheless fragile Daisy Jones, the brother-in-the-shadows Graham Dunne. But unlike a more traditionally structured novel, we obtain no greater insight into what they are really thinking aside from what they care to confess to the interviewer. Yet — and this may be a comment on the reviewer as much as it is on the writing — we intuitively know with great familiarity these characters from the book.
The descriptions of the music are also tantalising and makes one wish this were a real album. Iin an interview, Reid equates one of the songs in the book Regret Me with Fleetwood Mac’s Silver Springs, and it makes one wish that someone would perhaps construct a soundtrack for the book.
Perhaps the least inspired and most insipid aspect of the book is the main plotline, which is ultimately a love story. Love is something that has always featured in Reid’s previous novels and it comes as no surprise that it features heavily in the moment of denouement. You can see it a mile coming, but, at the same time, you would be hard-pressed to find an alternative ending for the book. Yes, it is a cliché, but it is all the more enjoyable for it.
Verdict: A really fun and compulsive read. Readers with the slightest interest in 70s rock would find it compelling and un-put-downable. (8/10)
Availability: Hardback, RM79.90
Special thanks to Ballantine Books for a review copy of the book.
The Unesco World Book and Copyright Day falls on April 23 annually, and each year, a city is named World Book Capital. For 2019, that honour falls on Sharjah, the United Arab Emirates; as such, this month’s picks are dedicated to featuring books written by Middle Eastern authors. Often set in the interstices of culture, tradition and modernity, these stories reflect the pervasive tension that has beset the modern Middle East and its reverberations through the lives of individuals. Yet, these are beautiful stories with sheer underlying humanity that will resonate with every reader.
The President’s Gardens by Muhsin Al-Ramli (RM49.90) Seeing first-hand the terrible suffering endured by ordinary people in the violent tragedies of Iraq in its modern history was the catalyst for Iraqi writer, poet, academic and translator Muhsin Al-Ramli to write this profound novel. The story begins with Ibrahim, nicknamed “the Fated”, whose story is told set against the last 50 years of the country’s history, of dictatorship, invasion and occupation. Essential to understanding Ibrahim’s story are those of his two best buds, Tariq “the Befuddled”, a schoolteacher, and Abdullah, known as “Kafka”, who becomes a soldier and ends up a prisoner of war. Ibrahim, after he was made lame during the invasion of Kuwait, finds a job in the titular garden, an idyllic location by all appearances but which belies the horrors lurking within. This gripping story of life in a war zone is a vivid investigation of love, death, injustice and the importance of friendship.
Seeing first-hand the terrible suffering endured by ordinary people in the violent tragedies of Iraq in its modern history was the catalyst for Iraqi writer, poet, academic and translator Muhsin Al-Ramli to write this profound novel. The story begins with Ibrahim, nicknamed “the Fated”, whose story is told set against the last 50 years of the country’s history, of dictatorship, invasion and occupation. Essential to understanding Ibrahim’s story are those of his two best buds, Tariq “the Befuddled”, a schoolteacher, and Abdullah, known as “Kafka”, who becomes a soldier and ends up a prisoner of war. Ibrahim, after he was made lame during the invasion of Kuwait, finds a job in the titular garden, an idyllic location by all appearances but which belies the horrors lurking within. This gripping story of life in a war zone is a vivid investigation of love, death, injustice and the importance of friendship.
Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nafisi (RM79.90) In this intimate memoir, Iranian author and English professor Azar Nafisi recounts the two years in the Islamic Republic of Iran when she met with seven of her most dedicated female students to read and discuss forbidden Western classics by authors including Jane Austen, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Henry James, and of course, Vladimir Nabokov. This took place from 1995 to 1997 at a time of increased radicalism, when Islamic morality squads would stage arbitrary raids in Tehran, artistic expression was stifled with censorship, and fundamentalists were taking hold of universities. The women who gathered every Thursday morning came from diverse backgrounds — some conservative, others secular — but bonded over their shared love for literature. Literary criticism is intertwined with personal stories of resilience in the face of tyranny, and the result is a book that is illuminating in more ways than one.
The Map of Love by Ahdaf Soueif (RM75.50) Egyptian writer and translator Ahdaf Soueif examines the repercussions of the British occupation of Egypt and the fierce political battles of the Egyptian Nationalists in an evocative, epic romantic tale between an English aristocrat, Lady Anna Winterbourne, and Sharif al-Baroudi, an Egyptian nationalist, in 1900. A century later, Anna’s great-granddaughter Isabel Packman finds her notebooks, journals and letters in a trunk and travels to Egypt to piece together Anna’s life. Accompanying her on this journey is Omar Ghamrawi, the man she loves and who happens to be Sharif’s grandnephew. There she meets Omar’s sister Amal, and they become fast friends. Told through the Amal’s voice, Anna and Sharif’s story is echoed by the love affair between Isabel and Omar, set against the continuing political turmoil of the Middle East. This absorbing, eloquent novel provides a lesson in cultural and political history, but also the intricacies of love.
The Red-Haired Woman by Orhan Pamuk (RM75.50) Turkish novelist, academic and Nobel Laureate Orhan Pamuk has written a beguiling mystery that explores father-son relationships and questions of patricide in a nod to Oedipus Rex. After Cem’s father abandons the family, the 16-year-old apprentices himself to a master well digger, Mahmut. Cem becomes attached to the elderly man and comes to regard him as a surrogate father. Then one day he meets a stunning red-haired woman, Gülcihan, who is as taken with him as he is by her. A subsequent act by the well puts an end to things, Cem’s relationship with Mahmut also comes to a tragic end. These events change Cem’s life forever and haunt him for the next 30 years. This is an extraordinary novel from one of the great storytellers of our time.
Three Daughters of Eve by Elif Shafak (RM43.90) Turkish author Elif Shafak’s 10th novel, Three Daughters of Eve, wrestles with questions of identity, faith and feminism through the story of Peri, a Turkish housewife and mother. A violent encounter with a vagrant while Peri was on her way to a dinner party in Istanbul one evening causes an old polaroid to fall out of her purse, triggering unpleasant memories of the past that she would much rather forget. The memories are of her time at Oxford University. She and her two best friends, the worldly Shirin and the devout Mona, engaged in lively discourses on Islam and feminism. Peri also took a life-changing course on God with Shirin’s mentor, the charismatic but controversial divinity professor, Azur. Their group is torn apart by a scandal, and its effects are still felt in present day. Shafak deftly weaves a tale with philosophical overtones to give the reader much to mull over long after the novel ends.
This article appears in the April 2019 issue of FireFlyz, the in-flight magazine of Firefly airlines.
Who: David R. Gillham is the author of the NYT bestselling City of Women. He studied screenwriting at the University of Southern California before transitioning into fiction. After moving to New York City, Gillham spent more than a decade in the book business, and he now lives with his family in Western Massachusetts. Annelies is his latest novel based on the life of famous diarist Anne Frank.
What: What if Annelies Marie Frank, better known as Anne Frank, survived the Nazi death camps to become one of the few to return to a broken post-war Europe? Gillham’s novel explores this possibility of the return of a broken and brutalised Anne to a home in shambles where her father, Pim, is the only surviving member of the Frank family. But whereas Pim is intent on picking up from where the family left off, Anne is tormented by the horrors of the war, by the betrayal of her family at the hands of Nazi conspirators and her own deeply rooted survivor’s guilt. To top it off, the diary which had become her sole comfort and inspiration goes missing after the family’s arrest. She is desperate to flee her past, but options are few for Holocaust survivors in post-war Europe.
In Gillham’s retelling, the Anne Frank story begins in the weeks leading up to their decision to go into hiding. Anne is a vivacious and somewhat difficult 13-year old (read: typical teenager) unlike her more sober-minded and responsible older sister. Despite having fled their home in Germany and now living in Nazi-occupied Holland, the Frank family did okay for themselves with Pim having set up a fairly lucrative pectin business and the girls seemingly adjusting well to their new Dutch identities. But anti-semitism was on the rise and the Frank family opted to go into hiding, and were subsequently betrayed to the Gestapo.
Why: Few Holocaust figures have captured the imagination quite the same way as Anne Frank, whose diary provides a vivid and poignant look into life under occupied Holland. Living in a secret annex behind her father’s offices, Anne’s diary was a living record of fugitives attempting to live as normal a life as possible despite the daily threat of betrayal or being discovered by the Nazi secret police. Anne dreamed of being a writer and she filled her diaries with stories and descriptions and ruminations of life within her secret space. The real Anne would not survive the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, and would succumb to disease just weeks before the camp’s liberation by the British forces.
In Gillham’s Annelies, Anne survives — just barely — Bergen-Belsen, but she returns a changed woman. Unlike Pim whose faith in god and humanity survives the death camps, Anne, who bore witness to her mother and sister’s deaths, has now become a jaded, cynical and empty woman. Moreover, her diary which was both the literal and figurative representation of her ambition, has gone missing. Wracked by guilt, uncontrollable anger and grief, Anne can find no succour in her new life in Holland and is desperate to start somewhere else. Her desire for a new beginning puts her at odds with her once beloved Pim, who begins to find that post-war Europe has yet to come to terms with its own anti-semitic past.
The book is wonderfully descriptive and the characters well fleshed out. The development in Anne’s character is believable and the horrors of the Nazi camps — as well as life after — rigorously researched. And yet, there is a sense that Anne is somewhat diminished in the book. This may be an unpopular opinion but an essential part of the real Anne is the tragedy of her life cut short, leaving behind nothing but her living record of the days leading up to her arrest. Don’t get me wrong — there is much to admire in surviving the Holocaust but therein is the problem; Anne’s story post-war becomes a survivor’s story but it could have been any survivor, and not one unique to Anne. Ultimately, I suspect the intrigue of Anne Frank is due as much to the diary she leaves behind as well as the fact that it is the only thing she leaves behind.
Verdict: A well-researched and well-written historical fiction, and fans of Anne Frank will find the hypothetical ‘What If?’ compelling. (7/10)
Availability: Trade Paperback, RM84.90
Special thanks to Viking Books for a review copy of the book.
In recognition of International Women’s Day on March 8, we have come up with a list of books that feature women and their experiences in one way or another. Some of the titles we have chosen celebrate the unique contributions of women while others shine a spotlight on some of the continuing challenges they face in our still flawed, but hopefully improving, gendered society. These books will entertain and edify.
The Weight of Our Sky by Hanna Alkaf (RM55.90) The debut novel of Malaysian author Hanna Alkaf, The Weight of Our Sky is a work of historical fiction centred on a young Malay girl caught in the crossfire of the 1969 race riots in Kuala Lumpur. Plagued by gruesome thoughts she believes was placed in her head by a malevolent djinn, Melati has imagined her mother’s death countless times. Thus when the riots finally erupt, she has but one goal in mind: to get to her mother, the one person she can’t risk losing. With the help of a Chinese boy Vincent, Melati navigates a city in flames all the while trying very desperately to shake away the fatalistic prognostications of the demon in her head. Alkaf’s novel is a thrilling ride which reveals a chapter in the history of Malaysia that is seldom discussed and more seldom the background of young adult novels. It is a sensitive retelling of a prickly chapter in the history of the country and a refreshing take on the YA adventure novel.
Her Body & Other Parties by Carmen Maria Machado (RM59.90) Machado’s collection of stories distil the variegated experiences of women in relation to their body — in particular the violence visited upon them in both myth and reality — and situates them in borderless worlds. At once horror, thriller, science fiction and comedy, Her Body uncovers the twisted logic that reduces women’s body into a cause celebre that turns people monstrous and the actual body itself becomes inconsequential. In the first story, The Husband Stitch, a woman refuses her husband’s entreaties to remove a green ribbon tied around her neck which infuriates the husband. It becomes the locus of aggression and frustration — the metaphorical value of the ribbon here is quite obvious — which can only end in heartbreak and defeat. Her Body was a finalist of the National Book Award and is one of the more unique collection of writings on women in recent years.
The Silence of the Girls by Pat Barker (RM79.95) The most memorable characters in Homer’s The Iliad and The Odyssey are arguably the men — glorious Achilles, cunning Odysseus, doomed Hector and cruel Agamemnon are but some examples. The women tend to be the mothers of heroes or altar sacrifices to appease the gods; in other words, not very interesting even though the entire Trojan war was sparked by the kidnapping of the lovely Helen. In Pat Barker’s Silence of the Girls, her choice of protagonist is Briseis, a captive slave from the Greek invasion of Troy. Falling from her lofty position as queen of her city, Briseis would eventually be remembered in most retellings for her role as the bone of contention between Achilles and Agamemnon. But Barker’s retelling gives Briseis back her voice and her freedom, imagining the happenings behind the scenes with the women as Greek heroes while soldiers warred with their Trojan counterparts. This magnificent novel inverts the traditional narrative, sending the war into the background and instead focuses on the experiences of the thousands of women wrested from their home and forced to survive in their new reality as slave girls and war trophies.
The Unwinding of the Miracle by Julie Yip-Williams (RM75.50) There has been a recent spate of memoirs written by women documenting their unlikely ascent from questionable backgrounds into relatively better environs. We use the term ‘better’ advisedly because it somehow seems to diminish the value of their individual journeys and experiences, but we think it is probably suitable in the case of Yip-Williams who succumbed to cancer in 2018. Born blind in Vietnam in 1976, she narrowly escaped euthanasia planned by her grandmother only to be forced to flee because of the political upheaval following the establishment of the socialist republic. Eventually making her way to the US, she gains partial sight after undergoing surgery and beats all odds to become a Harvard-educated lawyer. She marries and starts a family only to be diagnosed with cancer in 2013. Inspiring and instructive, The Unwinding is a candid and humorous memoir of a life that was well-lived but unfortunately cut cruelly short.
The Water Cure by Sophie Mackintosh (RM69.95) What if men were toxic, literally and figuratively? That’s the premise that Sophie Mackintosh’s haunting Booker-longlisted debut novel examines through Grace, Lia and Sky, three girls who live on an island with their parents, Mother and King. The sisters were raised to believe that men’s uncontrollable emotions and violence are the cause of the chemical destruction on the mainland, and they (the exception being their father) continue to pose as the greatest threats. To keep them healthy, the girls are forced to perform a series of elaborate purifying rituals, including the most extreme one, the water cure. But when the King disappears and three men wash ashore, a psychological cat-and-mouse game ensues, sexual tensions surface, and sibling rivalries erupt. This novel is a taut and riveting exploration of solidarity, sisterhood, the gender divide, and the illusion of safety.
This article appears in the March 2019 issue of FireFlyz, the in-flight magazine of Firefly airlines.
