Anne's Cradle: the Life and Works of Hanako Muraoka

 by Eri Muraoka

This book is about the Japanese translator of the Anne of Green Gables and other L.M. Montgomery books (16 of 21).

It is a fascinating story about an amazing woman.

Hanoka was one of the children of a poor tea merchant.  All the other children were sent into service of some kind but Hanoka's father, who had become a Christian, decided to send her to a girl's school run by Christian missionaries.  She was sent there at 10 years of age and lived in a dorm at the school.   Most of the students were of wealthy parents but somehow she got in on a scholarship.  Most of the missionaries were Canadian.

She was an eager student and especially liked to devour the English language books in the library.  She shrived in the school and while she longed to be a translator she started out by being a school teacher. At quite an advanced age for a young woman, she met and married her husband whose family ran a publishing company.  This was of course right up her alley.  However, an earthquake destroyed the printing business and the other brother who had been co-managing with it also died.  Hanako and her husband struggled to start up another publishing company.  In addition to earning money for her own family Hanoka also tried to support her family as well so money was tight.

She was committed to publishing books for children. She translated a lot of english language books such as Twain, Dickens and Buck.  She also became active in the Japanese suffragette movement.

When world war started the teachers at the school had to leave the country.  One of the teachers gave Hanako a well-worn copy of Anne of Green Gables before she left.  Hanako and her husband's printing business was destroyed, by a bomb this time.  While the war raged on Hanako would take the copy of Anne of Green Gables and her translation notes with her every time she went to a shelter.  She knew that if she was caught with this book by the "enemy" she would face imprisonment or even death but she kept on.

After the war she tried to get the book published and finally in 1952 she was successful.  It was an instant success, exceeding the expectations of Hanako and the publisher.  She went on to translate more of Montgomery's books.  She never made it to PEI.  Eventually she was part of the group to convince the Americans who were "governing" Japan after the war that women should have the right to vote and they did get the right.

Hanako's house had a huge library, later in life she opened her private library to the neighbourhood children and eventually donated the collection to some institution.

An fascinating women who had an amazing life.  Like Anne she persevered through many difficulties, death of her son, loss of businesses, the war, etc.

In the Footsteps of the Group of Seven

 by Jim and Sue Waddington     

This book is a history of the Group of Seven with photos of the locations they painted with the paintings of the locations.

It was very interesting to see how they "interpreted" what they saw when they painted.

I hope to keep that in mind when I paint.

My Brilliant Friend

 by Elena Ferrante

This is the story of a young girl growing up in post war Italy near Naples.  As the book opens she gets a call from the son of her best friend who tells her his mother has disappeared.  All her clothing etc. are gone.  The woman isn't surprised by this development and tells him not to contact her again as she has no idea where his mother has gone.

The book is the first of a series of books which I assume will ultimately explain where the woman's friend, Lina, has gone.

The book follows the life of the girls as they become best friends.  Lina is a very intelligent but also very spunky, even aggressive girl who doesn't take guff from anyone.  The main character is enthralled with her best friend.  She relies on her friendship, thinks about her all the time, even when Lina is cruel to her.  There is a lot of conflict and violence within families and between young men trying to assert their manhood,  One man drove a widow crazy when he wooed her, when his wife forces them to leave the neighbourhood, the woan really loses it.

The book does and excellent job of portraying life, tragedies, scandals and gossip in the small town.  It shows the girls as they get interested in boys and vice versa.  Lina always seems to have to the need to show she is smartest, even when she is forced to leave school to work in her family shoe repair shop.

When she learns that the main character is taking Latin  , Lin a borrows books from the local library learns latin on her own.

Lina and her brother plan to develop a company making shoes, but don't tell their father.  Everyone, adults and especially young men seem enthralled with Lina.  One wealthy young man asks to marry her.  She says no but her parents welcome his attention.  They also accept his investment in their shoe company.  Lina finally accepts a proposal from a boy whose family own a grocery store.

While all this is happening the main character continues to go to school, but she starts to wonder what it will get her.  She is also hurt that her friend keeps getting all the attention, she feels ugly by comparison.

The book ends up being a little like a soap opera but it did a great job of portraying life in Italy, the coming of age of the girls, the family dynamics, the gap between the wealthy and the poor, the neighbourhood conflicts.

The book ends with Lina's wedding.  She is shocked to see her first suitor come to her reception wearing the first pair of shoes she and her brother made.  Did her husband sell them to this man?  We imagine Lina won't react well to this.

The story is now on Netflix.  I think I may continue to watch the series on Netflix rather than read three more books.

 

The Eighth Detective

 by Alex Pavesi

This is one of the most original mystery books I have ever read.  I really enjoyed it.

The story starts with a woman who is supposedly an Editor for a small mystery book publisher who wants to meet the author of a mystery book called the White Murders that was published 20 years before.  She says her company wants to publish the book.

The author is reclusive, living on a Greek Island.  He was a math prof who wrote a book about the mathematical elements of mystery stories. He asks the woman to read each of the stories aloud to him.  She does so.  One chapter will be the story, the next chapter will be their discussion of elements of the story.  I have to say each of the stories is quite unique.  It starts off with one victim and one murderer, a victim and several murderers, a story where the detective is actually the murderer... etc

The woman wants to know if the author named the book after a famous murder of a woman named White, which occurred around the time that the book was self-published.  The author denies any connection.

The lady points out some inconsistencies in the stories.  The author replies that he put these in to tease his readers.  As the stories go along the woman seems to be getting suspicious.  In the end we find out the woman is not really an Editor, she has come to see the author because she believes he was her father.  She became suspicious of the man she was speaking to and starts revising parts of the stories or the endings.  When he doesn't confront her about this she challenges him that he is not really the author.  The man then admits that he was the author's lover.  The author had been wearing the man's jacket when he was killed when the edge of a cliff collapsed under him.  The village assumed the author's lover had died which was fine with the lover as he took on the persona and continued to live of the pension of the author/mathematician.

It then comes out that the mathematician did not write the stories.  The murder victim, Miss White, had come to the prof asking his feedback on her stories.  He murdered her and claimed the stories were his own.

This was an intriguing book, both the mystery stories themselves and the way the story developed.  I look forward to reading other books by this author.

Sufferance

 by Thomas King

About two million years ago, man appeared. He has become the dominant species on the earth. All other living things, animal and plant, live by his sufferance. He is the custodian of life on earth, and in the solar system. It's a big responsibility.”

— George Wald

Quotes from the flyleaves of the book:

"To the memory of what we have lost and what we continue to destroy"

"Then who do we shoot?".  1940 film adaptation of Steinbeck's book Grapes of Wrath.

Wow, this is a very different book than his detective books and his last book Indians on vacation.  It is going to stay with me a long time. It is called a satire, and I would agree with that but it is also subversive.  The story is also timely with the recent discover of the graves of hundreds of children on the properties of former residential schools.  The story is also very complex.

The story takes place in an Ontario town adjacent to an Indian reservation.  The main character, Jeremiah Camp is trying to hide from the world in a residential school (irony??).  He has been given the school by his former employer (how would one go about buying a residential school??).  He has no tv nor Internet and likes it that way.  He spends his time going to the river and digging up large flat stones to replace the wooden crosses in the school graveyard with headstones on which he carves the names of the children.

Camp has returned to this town but he really doesn't know it.  His mother died when he was young and after that he spent years in foster homes away from the reserve.  The only thing he has of his mother's is a battered lunchbox with a few photos in it.  He thinks he knows which person is his mother but doesn't know who other people are.

Camp does not speak, by choice.  People on the reserve and in the town speak to him.  The town has quite a cast of quirky characters. He has a regular routine, quinoa for breakfast, then he goes into town to by a brownie which he takes to a cafe which is only open to him and a few other people.  There he has a cappuccino and is read the news of the day by the cafe owner.

The people on the reservation are living in government supplied trailers which are plagued with black mould.  At one point officials come out with spray cans they say will eliminate the mould.  One man sprays the officials car and it takes the paint off the car.....  The indigenous residents have another problem.  The mayor of the town has cut off water and electricity to the reserve. He is trying to force them off the land.  He wants to build a new town on their land.

Camp's seclusion is disturbed by the arrival of three men, employees of the daughter of his former employer (who is now dead).  They refer to him as the Forecaster and tell him to come with them for a meeting.  The head man is named Flood. He is reluctant but feels he has no choice.  He doesn't want to have anything to do with his old life.

He meets his employer's daughter who tells him about a list of twelve names he had compiled in the past.  Several of the people on the list have died, including her father.  She wants him to figure out the connection between these deaths.  He doesn't want to do it and goes back home.

His seclusion is further disrupted when an aboriginal woman, now a lawyer, returns to the reserve with her young daughter.  She has no place to live and Flood has set the woman and her daughter up with furnished rooms in the residential school and installed internet and satellite tv.  The little girl likes flood and he likes her but he resents his solitude being disrupted.

Later Flood also arranges for the local homeless people, who are being chased from their camping spots to be housed in the residential school.  Now Camp is really upset.  He goes to stay in a local hotel at the "company's" expense, to an abandoned building formerly used by the homeless and finally to the mouldy trailer of a relative who is also now recuperating from pneumonia at the school.  Flood even finds him there.

Flood keeps getting hauled back to meetings with the dead bosses daughter and eventually determines that all the names were associated with one Foundation.  It turns out all the people associated with the foundation were wealthy people who were trying to achieve immortality.  They were thinking this would be good for society, but the question has to be asked for whom?  Only the super rich??

In the end Flood finds out that that his boss's daughter has been wiping out the 12 super rich because she doesn't like what they are trying to do.  She tries to get Flood to help her identify other rich people who should be removed.  He declines to assist.

While the book is proceeding the band office trailer has been burned down.  People originally blame the mayor but it turns out to be a mentally handicapped native boy who poured gasoline on a hot generator while trying to fill the tank.  That is what caused the fire.

The boss's daughter hires the lawyer woman to handle a project to re development the buildings on the reservation.  The company also pays her fees to get herself reinstated as a lawyer.  There are also plans to turn the abandoned building into low cost housing, by the company.  The woman tells Flood that now that she has a real job she and her daughter will find their own place to live.  The mayor is under investigation for misuse of funds (taking bribes on business contracts).

The resident cat at the school had gotten into Camp's mother's lunchbox.  When Camp's relatives see the pictures they tell him that the woman he had thought was his mother is not his mother.  They don't see her in any of the pictures and don't know who the other people in the pictures are.  His one connection to his mother evaporates.

As the book ends Camp is continuing to work on the grave markers but isn't sure if he will stay or go when his job is done.

The book is very topical as I mentioned at the beginning, the historical abuse and current neglect of native reserves is vividly portrayed.  The huge gap between the rich and poor and the rights, abuse, ego of the rich is front and centre.  Taking action against the rich is quite a step.  It was really interesting how the main character never spoke but people spoke to him and seemed to know what he was thinking or what he wanted.  We never did find out why he decided to quit speaking and quit his job.

 

 

Swimming Back to Trout River

 by Linda Rui Feng

This is a book set in China around the time of the Cultural Revolution. 

It starts with a young couple, Momo and Cassia, who have a handicapped child.  The woman decides to give her child to her in-laws to raise.  They love her and care for her very well.  First the grandfather makes her a wheeled cart that she can propel with sticks.  Eventually he makes her some prosthetic legs.  The father loves the girl and wants her to learn to play the violin but when he gives her a small violin and tries to teach her to play she throws it away.

We later learn that the girl's mother had loved a young man who died and she feels she was punished for this illicit affair by having the handicapped child.

Another character in the book is Dawn, a young chinese violinist, who has achieved acclaiim.

Momo has received permission to go to the U.S. to study.  He hopes to have his wife and daughter join him.  The daughter doesn't want to leave her grandparents.  His wife does make it to San Francisco but decides to stay there rather than join her husband.  She becomes a nanny for a little boy and has been told to only speak to him in Chinese.

Eventually Mom and Cassia develop relationships with other people in the U.S.

Momo has written Dawn telling her how impressed he is with her work and also telling her a bit about his life and his wish for his daughter to play the violin.

Dawn travels to the U.S. with a Chinese orchestra and then seeks asylum in the U.S.  She has left a man she reluctantly married behind in China.

In the end of the book Momo has learned how to drive so that he can drive to San Francisco to try to convince his wife to join him and for them to get their daughter to America with them.   The woman tells him she has a lover.  They go for a drive and are killed in a car accident.

The book ends with Dawn arriving at the daughter's home in China with her violin and a child-size violin.

It was an interesting story, sad to see how the mother didn't care for her own child but could bond with someone else's.  However, I think I would have to read it again to understand the relationship between Dawn and the family,

Book of Lost Names

 by Kristin Harmel

I have been reading so many books set in WWII that I was a bit reluctant to start this book.  But I am really glad I read it.  It was a fascinating story, really well told.

The story starts with an old woman in the U.S. learning about a project to return stolen books back to Jews.  One of the books identified is an old Christian text.  The woman decides she must go to Berlin to see the book.  Her son doesn't understand why she needs to go and convinces her not to go but while she tells him she won't go she does book a flight.

The story is set in Paris as the Nazis are rounding up Jews in that city.  A young woman works at the local library with her parents.  A Jewish friend of hers tells her that things are getting dangerous and she and her parents should make plans to leave. She tells her parents what she was told but they refuse to leave.  They don't realize how bad things will get.

One night a neighbour, who hates them because they are Jewish, asks for help babysitting her children while she goes to look after her sick mother.  The woman and her mother go to the woman's apartment.  While they are there the girl hears a noise in the hallway and witnesses her father being hauled away.  The girl and her other are devasted.

The mother doesn't want to leave Paris.  She hopes her husband will return.  But they find out that the neighbour who hated them has taken over their apartment. They manage to get fake travel documents which enable them to travel to a french town on the border of Switzerland.  The plan is to make their way to Switzerland.  However the girl is soon recruited, because of her artistic skills, to help make fake documents.  She works with a young Jewish man in a room in the Catholic Church.  The priest is part of a network of people in the town who are helping Jews, including orphaned children escape to Switzerland.  

The girl's mother is furious with her for 1) not trying to find the father 2) not wanting to escape to Switzerland, 3) associating with the Catholic priest.  She thinks hanging around the Catholics will cause her to lose her faith.  The girl does make it to a detention centre.  She is told her father was executed.

The girl continues to help forge documents, having to adjust as the officials get more astute and identifying forgeries.  She knows she is in danger but she feels she has to do what she can to help others.  The girl feels sad that Jewish children's names and identities are being erased through recreating identities for them.  She wants to preserve a record.  She and her forger partner devise a plan to put different marks above different letters in an old religious text in the church room they are working in.  The marks spell out the young children's names and there is also a coded message between the girl and the forger.

The young man who first warned her about danger in Paris shows up. As he is Jewish her mother is happy he is there and encourages her to marry him.  The girl however is falling for her fellow forger, a Christian.

Eventually the young forger decides he needs to be a fighter and help escort people across the border. The resistance people are ultimately identified by a traitor to their cause.  It turns out it was the young Jewish man the girl's mother wanted her to marry.  He did it to save his own life.  Many local people are killed because of him.

The young woman and the forger agreed to meet on the library steps in Paris after the war.  She returns to Paris and goes to the steps over many days.  When her lover doesn't show up she assumes he has died. The books from the church library are stolen and the church is burned.

The woman's mother dies but she is joyful when after the war she is reunited with her father who survived the camps. Her father dies shortly after.

One day she meets a young American soldier in Paris.  They have similar interests.  After a short time he asks her to marry him and she agrees as she has nothing left for her in France.

When the woman returns to Paris and goes to the museum that has the book that has the names, she is shocked to learn that another man has come to claim the book. It turns out to be her forger lover.

She decides it is time to tell her son about her life during the war.

This was a very well written story, with lots of suspense and great historical details.