Thursday, February 22, 2024

Oath and Honor, by Liz Cheney


The decline and fall of the Republican Party, as told by one of its own

I thought I was over reading books about Donald Trump, but apparently not. Liz Cheney's memoir of her time in Congress is a surprisingly good read, a gripping minute-by-minute account of how the Republic Party fell to Donald Trump. It's a story of Republican colleagues Cheney had thought were good and decent, hypocritically supporting a man they in private loathed. Not only that, when it became obvious Trump was dangerous and a threat to American democracy, Republicans continued to trumpet his lies. As Cheney makes clear, Trump didn't do it on his own, he had a legion of enablers in the Republican Party. They should have known better.

For those non-American readers who've always marveled at how forthright American patriotism is, Cheney also makes you understand why. She discusses the importance of the constitution and how America's freedoms were hard fought for. To be a patriot means putting democracy and the constitution above one's political party.

An excellent insider's account from someone who has rubbed shoulders with a lot of the main players in the Republican Party, providing a stunning amount of detail, but also some fascinating thumbnail portraits.

Oath and Honor: A Memoir and a Warning, by Liz Cheney. Published by Headline. 

Friday, February 16, 2024

The Paper Man, by Billy O'Callaghan


A box of letters reveals a tragic past.

Jack Shine works on the docks in the Irish city of Cork. It's 1980 and Jack is forty-one years old. He's helping clear out his uncle Joe's house, which is up for sale. It is the house he was born and raised in. While cleaning up they find a box of letters and news articles. The letters are addressed to his mother, Rebekah, and are from a famous footballer named Matthias Sindelar. Rebekah had fled Vienna in the late 1930s, in serious danger as a young Jewish woman. The letters and articles reveal the essence of a passionate relationship between Rebekah and the Catholic Matthias.

Eager to find out more, Jack travels with his Jewish (and German speaking) father-in-law, Samuel, to Vienna, trying to piece together more pieces of the puzzle. Rebekah had died when Jack was only 10 years old and had never explained this mysterious part of her past.

The Paper Man (the title refers to the on-field agility of Matthias Sindelar as a footballer) is apparently based on real people and events. Irish writer Billy O'Callaghan has fashioned a slow moving yet absorbing story of love, desperate times and the tragic effects of war on everyday people. This is not a perfect love story by any chance. Matthias is portrayed as a bit of a womaniser, and Rebekah's parents are none too happy with their relationship, but O'Callaghan shows how war cut like a scythe through society. Those on the Nazis' hit list had to drop everything and run for their lives. We don't know how Rebekah and Matthias's relationship would have panned out had not war interrupted it.

A poignant war story carefully told.  

The Paper Man, by Billy O'Callaghan. Published by Jonathan Cape. $34.99

OCT23

Impossible Creatures, by Katherine Rundell


Two children unwittingly find themselves in a battle against evil

In a secret part of the world, protected by a secure passageway, is a place called the Archipelago. It's a place of wonder, populated with the creatures of ancient myth: unicorns, sphinxes, nereids, mermaids, dragons, hippocamps and centaurs, to name a few. When a young boy named Christopher Forrester comes across a baby griffin in a lake, he finds himself drawn into the archipelago. There he meets Mal Arvorian. She tells of how a magical force keeps the archipelago and its wildlife thriving, but its natural sustainability is under threat from malevolent forces. Mass extinction and ecological disaster looms. Through a series of great adventures and battles, Mal learns she has been enlisted to help save the Archipelago from ruin, with Christopher offering all the help he can.

Children (8+) will eat up this fantasy / adventure story. Katherine Rundell writes in a crisp, well paced prose. There are all the usual set pieces – magic flying coats, floating buildings, strange creatures – creating a fabled world that is never short of surprises. The serious themes of the book (ecological destruction caused by greed) are balanced by Rundell's wit and cheerful style. The bittersweet ending will leave readers emotionally satisfied.

Adventure, the battle between good and evil and a wild cast of characters (the gruff sailor Nighthand is a delight) make Impossible Creatures a sure delight for young fantasy readers.

Impossible Creatures, by Katherine Rundell. Published by Bloomsbury Children's Books. $18.99

OCT23

What You Are Looking For is in the Library, by Michiko Aoyama


A small community library run by the eccentric Ms Komachi changes the lives of five people.

Five stories – five lives – all connected by one place, a community library in the Hatori ward of Tokyo. The library is run by Sayuri Komachi, a large, tall woman with perfect white skin. She sits under a sign that says “Reference” and stabs at felt pieces with a needle, making little toys. Her somewhat goofy assistant is Nozomi Morinaga, a young woman on her library training wheels. When patrons come to Ms Komachi's reference counter she asks, “What are you looking for?” She then prints out a list of suitable titles, but always adds in a book that seems completely off topic. It is these random books that take the library patrons on a new personal journey. 

Each of the five characters in What You Are Looking For is in the Library is going through some sort of personal problem. They are all searching for the right path in life, but find work and family getting in the way.

Twenty-one year old Tomoka feels at a loose end in her job as a sales assistant; Ryo, a thirty-five year old accountant, dreams of opening up his own antique store; Natsumi, forty years old, is a magazine editor finding it difficult to get the right work / life balance with her young daughter; Hiroya, a thirty year old, is unemployed and feeling guilty about still living at home; and lastly, there is sixty-five year old Masao, recently retired and finding himself with no social networks.

Through all of these individual stories, people gently find their way onto the right path. It's not necessarily an easy process, and they are all really just at the beginning of their journeys. Surely there will be other struggles to come. But the important thing for the book's characters is that they've had a change in mindset. They've learnt that life's circumstances won't allow them to completely live out their dreams, but with a few compromises, they can work towards honest self-fulfillment.

Japanese writer Michiko Aoyama has written a wonderfully therapeutic novel. It will strike a chord with many readers as it excavates our most private thoughts, fears and ambitions, treating them with compassion and understanding. A feel-good book, to be sure, but one that skilfully examines the human heart and our need for purpose and connection. 

What You Are Looking For is in the Library, by Michiko Aoyama. Published by Doubleday. $32.99

OCT23

The Lark, by E. Nesbit


Some delightful whimsy for adults from much loved children's author Edith Nesbit

Jane and her cousin Lucilla have received bad news. Their guardian has blown their inheritance and they must now be pulled from school. All that is left to the girls - they are actually young adults - is 500 pounds and a small cottage. It's up to them to show pluck and resolve and thus make something of themselves. Jane and Lucilla are thrilled at the news. They disliked school anyway. Rather than fret over financial catastrophe they imagine the start of a great adventure. 

The First World War has just ended, and there are many people down on their luck. One of them is a Mr. Dix, a war veteran, whom the girls stumble across in a gallery. They take him on as a gardener. When the girls move into a bigger house - again, a good piece of luck - they start a market garden business, selling mostly flowers. Soon they are taking on lodgers, many with dodgy reputations. No matter, even when the girls lose money, it's all really just a lark, nothing to get too worried about. 

The novel ends with marriage and much good cheer all round.

The Lark was Edith Nesbit's final novel for adults, published in 1922. It's a difficult book to pigeonhole. It's neither really adult nor children's fiction, but more of a frolic, aimed at readers with a taste for the absurd and surreal, much like  Lewis Carroll or Stella Gibbons' Cold Comfort Farm.  Nesbit's exuberant, life affirming prose also reminds of Shakespeare's Midsummer's Night Dream.

A magic holiday read that is a tonic and a delight.

The Lark, by E. Nesbit. Published by Penguin. $29.99

OCT23

From a Far and Lovely Country, by Alexander McCall Smith


Mma Precious Ramotswe is called upon to investigate two cases, one slightly comic, the other more of the heart.


Two cases come to the attention of Precious Ramotswe, founder of the No 1. Ladies Detective Agency, and her redoubtable assistant, Grace Makutsi. The first case involves the goings on at a certain Cool Singles Evening Club. It seems that single women are being duped by married men. Mma Ramotswe sends in her husband's assistant mechanic, Charlie, to go undercover and investigate. Although he is quite the amateur, he finds out a considerable amount, but when he follows through with some poorly thought through advice from Grace Makutsi, it leads to an unintended and very undesirable outcome.

The second investigation is more serious in nature and involves an American woman. She appears at the agency wanting help finding the relatives of a man who, although not a blood relative, was someone she considered her grandfather. There is a bitter-sweet ending to this story, as the woman doesn't find exactly what she was looking for, but experiences a larger truth that brings her much joy.

From a Far and Lovely Country is an utterly enjoyable new installment in the No 1. Ladies Detective series. It can be read as a stand alone novel. Alexander McCall Smith deftly explains his characters' quirks and foibles, and how their dynamics interweave, especially Mma Makutsi's somewhat comic backstory as a top student at her secretarial school. The gentle pace and rich cadences of McCall Smith's prose are a joy to read. On the serious side the novel deals with the more subtle moral problems that we encounter in day to day life, guiding its characters tactfully through the labyrinthine difficulties that are part and parcel of all interpersonal relationships.

An aesthetic, emotional and intellectual pleasure.

From a Far and Lovely Country, by Alexander McCall Smith. Published by Abacus. $32.99

OCT23

Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism, by Yanis Varoufakis


What has happened to capitalism in the age of the internet?


Yanis Varoufakis is an interesting mix of lived experience and academic theory. He was the Greek Minister for Finance when Greek government debt needed renegotiating with creditors during the country's 2015 fiscal crisis. Since then he has written several books on economics, the latest being Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism. It is written as a letter to his father, who was active in left-wing politics. The book centres around a question his father had asked him during the early days of the internet: will this new technology kill capitalism?

The answer to that question is complicated, as you'd imagine. In essence, Varoufakis says that the internet has created a group of mega rent seekers. For example, Google Play and the Apple Store use third party creators to create products to put on their platforms. Google and Apple merely hoover up the rents from these poor workers – proles, as Varoufakis calls them – for allowing them to use their digital shop front. Worse still is the situation for the “serfs”, everyday users like you and me who give our data free to the big tech companies to monetise. In short, we've all made a Faustian pact with the internet. We've garnered all these digital free goodies, but we've had to sell our souls in the process.

Technofeudalism is the story of concentrated power on steroids. The big tech companies offer the notion of “choice” - but there is none, really. It's either use their products or go without life's basic necessities such as banking, shopping, government and health services etc. Many authors have now tackled this subject, most notably Jaron Lanier and Shoshana Zuboff. Varoufakis offers an idiosyncratic history of capitalism, using Greek myths to get his point across. The result is a highly original yet contentious treatise on the state of the world's finances (much time is devoted to American debt and Chinese surpluses), written from an almost radical left-wing point of view. Many will find much to argue and wrestle with here, but also a range of thought provoking ideas to consider, coming from an original and unorthodox thinker.

Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism, by Yanis Varoufakis. Published by Jonathan Cape. $36.99.

OCT23