The Golem and the Jinni by Helene Wecker

When this book was added to my book club list, I dreaded reading it.  I just couldn't see how some sort of fantasy about mystical creatures living in New York in 1899 would appeal to me.  And the book did take some time to get going.  But, now I am glad I read it.  It turned out to be more than a fantasy - it was part love story, part mystery.  And the Golem and the Jinni were purposely imbued with human characteristics so for the most part it was easy to forget they were just creatures of human mystical belief.

The Golem is created in Poland to become the wife of a man immigrating to New York.  Against its creator's advice, he awakens her aboard ship before arriving.  Then he dies and she is left to fend for herself on the ship and in New York (after she walks to land on the bottom of the Hudson River).  Early on she is discovered by an old Rabbi who guesses at her secret and guides her in the ways of being human.

The Jinni is enslaved in the body of a human thousands of years earlier and captured in a copper pot which was passed on for generations.  When a New York based Syrian tinsmith is asked to repair the pot he mistakenly releases the Jinni.  Like the Golem's Rabbi, the tinsmith becomes the Jinni's guide to living life as a human in New York.

The remainder of the book deals with the troubles these two creatures have living as humans.  Of course, they eventually meet, immediately recognize the other is not human and face life together.  Though both are trapped as humans, they are created with very different natures which often clash.  Both also leave a great deal of carnage in their wake - some caused directly by them; some by mishaps of others who come in contact with them.

Another part of the book is unravelling the Jinni's past - he does not immediately recall how he was captured and enslaved as a human and that is eventually revealed to him and the reader.  As is the connection between his origins and the Golem's.

By the end I could not put the book down as I was so intrigued by seeing how the different storylines would come together - and they did, in my view in a very believable way.  So, don't hesitate to read this book like I did - it's worth the initial effort and the time commitment as it's not a short book.

Friendship by Emily Gould

In a word or two - don't bother.  This book deals primarily with the friendship between Bev Tunney and Amy Schein, two thirty year old women in New York who have been friends for years.  Or at least they describe themselves as friends - but Amy is so completely self absorbed I don't know how Bev can even stand her.  In fact, it seems like Bev initiated the friendship, kept it running and was the only one who cared when times got tough.  Not that Bev was perfect either, she could not hold down a job, moved across the country for a guy who ended up cheating on her under her nose (though it took her a long time to figure it out - apparently she had a pattern of trusting people who were only in it for themselves), was estranged from her family and, frankly, I was glad the book didn't last past when she had a baby as I'm sure she would have screwed that up too.

I know real people are flawed and everything, and I don't think fictional characters need to be super-human, but I just didn't like these characters enough to enjoy the book.  For me there were no redeeming qualities.

Ellen in pieces by Caroline Adderson

It's funny, while this book kept my attention, while I was reading it, I didn't think it was that thought provoking.  But then when I finished it, I couldn't stop thinking about it.  First of all, I don't think the description on the book jacket does it justice.  It makes it sound like a middle aged divorcee has a midlife crisis and turns to a much younger man for solace/entertainment/self-validation.  And while that does happen, this book is about so much more.

It deals with Ellen's relationship with her parents, who both die in tragic ways, her daughters, one a troubled ex drug addict, her ex-husband (and his mother), her two closest friends, her sister, her neighbours and even her dog.  The relationships are very complicated and often we see them from both sides as subsequent chapters are written from different perspectives.  In addition to changing narrators, at times new chapters jump ahead by a year or two - it can take a few pages to reorient yourself but I wouldn't say it's overly confusing.

What I found myself thinking about was the end of the book (which I won't give away) and whether it was satisfying.  I concluded it was as the relationships were very human and any loose ends were very realistic.  In all I enjoyed the book and it was a very easy read.

For Today I am a Boy by Kim Fu

This is a really interesting novel about Peter Huang, the only son of Chinese immigrant parents living in small town Ontario.  As the third of four children, Peter is revered by his father merely for being a boy.  But from a young age Peter relates more to his sisters and wants to be one of them.  They periodically indulge his desire to dress in their clothes, and his father, who suspects he is "soft" tries to strengthen him and mocks him for crying more than his sisters.  Peter's father is a philandering tyrant who tries to control his whole family.  One by one his children abandon the home - and only one following the path he decreed for them.  The eldest, Adele, escapes to Europe where she works as a nanny, the second daughter, Helen, studies hard then gets into law school in California where she follows the path expected of her (with the help of anti-depressants and anti-anxiety medications).  Peter becomes a chef and the youngest, Bonnie, turns a life of partying into a job as a stripper.

Peter's sisters and even his parents, guess at his secret, but it is not openly discussed until, in Montreal, as an adult, he meets other LGBT people and realizes he is not totally alone.  This allows him to explore how he really wants to live.

Though there is not a lot of action, this is a moving portrayal of a troubled boy who is totally uncomfortable with the identity foisted upon his at birth.  His internal struggles as well as those with his family and friends make for a fascinating read.  The author approaches the topic with sensitivity and powerful descriptive language.

Intolerable, A Memoir of Extremes

This is a fascinating memoir by Kamal Al-Solaylee, a professor of journalism at Ryerson in Toronto and a former theatre critic for the Globe and Mail.

Al-Solaylee was the eleventh and last child to be born (in 1964) into a well to do family in Aden, Yemen.  His mother was an illiterate child bride, the daughter of a shepherdess; his father a property developer who was partially educated in Britain and maintained close relations with the British colonial officers in Yemen.  The family was modern, concerned with fashion, immersed in the arts, and enamoured with British and American culture.

Everything started to change in the late 1960s when Yemen shrugged off the colonial powers and nationalized all of the property owned by Al-Solaylee's father.  His father relocated the large family to Beirut in what was supposed to be a temporary move until the situation in Aden stabilized.  The author was still a young child and has few memories of the time in Beirut though he does remember they lived above their means and were surrounded by the country's cultural elite.   They spent a lot of time watching Egyptian movies and listening to Egyptian and other pop music.  However, when Beirut became less safe due to the sectarian tensions, the family again relocated to Egypt.

Here the family remained very modern for years, spending beach vacations in Alexandria in bikinis.  The author, now a teenager, also realized he was gay.  Again the family lived beyond their means as their father was never able to re-establish his business and relied on savings he had squirrelled away in the UK.  Slowly the family turned more religious - first the eldest brother and then other brothers turned to the Quran and tried to restrict the movements and dress of the family's many daughters.  Of course, Kamal kept his sexual preferences to himself.

In the 1980s the family was again forced to move as sentiments in Egypt turned against Yemeni immigrants and the family members could not get permits necessary to work.  With no other options they returned to Sana'a, Yemen.  There the family became more and more religious as Kamal yearned to escape.  Which he did, eventually to study in England and then to become a permanent resident and finally citizen of Canada.  In the west he could live as a gay man though he never formally advised his family (he was sure his sisters and maybe even his mother had figured it out).  As Kamal becomes more and more free, his family, especially the women, become more and more trapped by a religious and isolated country.  The gap between them creates tension for Kamal which leads to depression.

In whole this is a fascinating story of how the events of history can have a major impact on a family and even markedly different impacts on different family members.

People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks

I read this book years ago and needed to read it again for book club but was somewhat hesitant since I had read it before, discussed it in another book club and seen the author speak about it.  But my hesitation vanished as soon as I began to read again.  Brooks writes so well - it's no wonder she's a Pulitzer Prize winner.

In some ways, the style reminds me of The Great House by Nicole Krauss, in that it revolves around the story of an object (in that case a desk; in this case the famous illuminated Sarajevo Haggadah) and jumps back and forth in time to explore the history of the object.  But this is just so much better written which makes the jumping back and forth far less confusing.

The novel starts in Sarajevo in 1996 - the UN has invited Hanna, an expert at restoring ancient texts, to restore the Sarajevo Haggadah which will be the centrepiece of a new museum display intending to show how people of different faiths could peacefully coexist and even influence each other's art (despite evidence to the contrary in the recent war).  There she meets the head of the Sarajevo library, Ozren, a Muslim who risked his life to save the manuscript during the war.

As she restores the Haggadah, Hanna comes across several clues embedded in it - the wings of an insect, evidence that it was once held together by clips which are now missing, wine stains, saltwater stains and a white hair.  In different chapters she uses forensics to trace where these items came from.  And in alternating chapters we are taken backwards in time to see where the Haggadah came from - the mountains of Yugoslavia during World War II, Vienna in 1894, Venice in 1609, Tarragona in 1492 and Seville in 1480.  In each of these chapters Brooks weaves a fascinating and realistic narrative with well developed characters who we get to really know though we see them for a very short time.

There are also side stories of Hanna's relationship with her mother, the father she never knew, her mentors in the book restoration trade and Ozren.  While not as compelling as the story of the Haggadah, I also found myself drawn into these stories and anxious to see them through to a conclusion.

I highly recommend reading this book - even if it's not your first time.

An Obedient Father by Akhil Sharma

I read this book because I really liked Sharma's more recent novel, Family Life.  While I liked this, I was a bit disappointed as it was not of the same calibre.  First of all, the main character, Ram Karan, was quite distasteful.  Not only was his "profession" collecting bribes on behalf of a government department, he was also a pedophile and engaged in incest.  His deceased wife was also not great since she knew of the incest and, while she put a stop to it, she did not report him or even seek help for her daughter.  As a result, the daughter, Anita has grown into a bitter, angry and therefore vindictive woman.  Ram's granddaughter, Asha, is a sweet kid at the start but even she turns out to be a difficult adolescent.  In sum, it was hard to truly like any of the characters, though you could sympathize with those who were Ram's victims.

The story follows the fallout of Ram's incestuous actions, 20 years after they took place.  His wife has died and Anita and Asha are forced to move in with him when her husband dies suddenly and she is left with no money.  Their living together, and Anita's fear that Asha will become the next victim, lead to very strained relations and Anita eventually going public with what occurred.  However, due to the sexist environment they live in, her confession not only affects Ram's life, but also hers and Asha's.

This is all set against the backdrop of the election campaign between BJP and Rajiv Gandhi and the eventual assassination of Gandhi.  We see Ram and his colleagues scramble to figure out which party to support with the bribe monies they collect - in some cases with very disastrous results.  It's pathetic that oftentimes Ram seems more troubled by his work activities than the rape of his daughter.

Though it his hard to rally behind the characters, they are believable, particularly in the context of the environment they live in.  And the description of Delhi at that time are vivid - I could particularly relate to the description of the pollution making it feel like living inside a coal miner's lungs.

I recommend this book but you have to be prepared for the serious topic and the distasteful characters.