Michael

Elif Shafak is one of my favorite authors. Her stories are always moving and original, her writing is always beautiful. There are Rivers in the Sky continues the pattern of beautiful, original stories.

This novel covers three basic timelines: the 18140s-1870s; 2014; and 2018. There is a kind of prologue in the time of the Assyrian king Ashurbanipal. t takes place in the UK and the Middle East in London, Constantinople (Istanbul), and Ninevah. There are two rivers that are almost characters in the novel—the Thames and the Tigris. And the stories and places are connected by a drop of water.

The major characters are Arthur, a man who is never able to forget and who rises from the London slums to become a respected authority on cuneiform tablets. He is obsessed with Ninevah and discovers tablets with the Epic of Gilgamesh; Zaleekhah, a scientist who researches rivers, who lost her parents in a flood by the Tigris River. And finally, there is Narin, a 9-year-old Yazidi girl, who survives the massacre of the Yazidis by ISIS in Iraq, only to be turned into a slave. Somehow Shafak ties all their stories together at the end.

This novel is beautiful and lyrical; ugly and cruel. It is at times heartbreaking, but at the same time, kindness is found in the most unexpected of places.

It is about our destruction of the natural environment and our destruction of each other. It covers the topics of modern slavery and genocide and who owns the cultural heritage of peoples that are no housed in museums and private collections.

Obviously, I loved this book, but it won’t be for everyone. The story is a little meandering, sort of like a river running through flatlands, and it dips into a type of magical realism. However, for me, it was another outstanding novel by Elif Shafak.

This is a reread for me. I first read it many, many years ago.

Michael Clark was a friend of mine who died recently from pancreatic cancer. We met in 1982, and even though our lives took very different turns, we remained friends until the end. I knew many of the people mentioned, and we are still friends with Bobby (who I know as Bob) even though he is living in the South and we are in Philadelphia. What I didn’t know was the depth of his searching/anger/despair. Perhaps he was shielding me from it? Perhaps there were other reasons. He ended two relationships while I knew him, while I am still with my now husband, who I met in 1981, so in that sense we were very different. Nevertheless, we were and remained friends. I even merit a mention in the acknowledgements!

I am not a theologian and the sections on theology went over my head, as they always did. However, reading this brought back the anger and fear of the early days of AIDS, the feeling that we had to do something. For that I am grateful.

Can’t rate this as it is too personal.

What did I just read? Was the author high when he wrote this novel? Actually, I doubt it since the “plot” is so intricate. At least I think it is intricate.

The main protagonist is Dengue Boy, later Dengue Girl, later Dengue Mother, later Dengue Void. The protagonist is a mosquito human hybrid. The novel mostly takes place. In the 23rd century when the earth is ravaged by climate change and much of Argentina has been drowned by the melting of the Antarctic ice sheet. There are also multiple timelines and of course “Hail, Mighty Anarch.” Read the novel to find out about the Mighty Anarch, although I read the novel and I’m still not sure about the MA.

This novel explores capitalism, classism, racism, and climate catastrophe. It concerns itself with the role of large companies in promoting classism, racism, and climate change. It is blunt, crude, and absurd. It deals with body horror and has some truly gross sexual imagery. I know that its complexity and philosophical musings went over my head, so I had to just give up and go along for the ride.

This novel is not for everyone, and I doubt that I will read it again. However, I did enjoy reading it, although I could have done without some of the sexual imagery that seemed a little gratuitous. Other than that, it was a lot of fun while at the same time discussing some extremely important issues.

3.75

Nicola Lagioia’s The City of the Living is the In Cold Blood-like retelling of the brutal and horrifying story of the murder of Luca Varani by Manuel Foffo and Marco Prato in Rome in 2016. First, I have to say that I generally don’t like works that are neither one thing or the other. I’m far too rigid and like things in categories—just ask anyone who knows me! The book cover says that this is “the true story of modern Rome’s most shocking murder.” Yet my edition published by Europa Editions labels this a work of fiction. The outlines of the story are true. Foffo and Prato did torture and murder Varani, but I guess because there are many conversations that the author could not have heard but reconstructed and motives guessed at, it falls into the fiction category?

That being said, this is a brutal, very graphic book about the actual murder and Lagioia obviously did a lot of research and a lot of interviewing before writing it. I liked the writing style and structure of the book. I know that being so close to this story Lagioia must have come to some sort of conclusions about the 3 main characters, but if so, he doesn’t tell us what exactly it is. He doesn’t really say who he thinks initiated the crime, what were Foffo’s and Prato’s true motives, and what were the underlying causes, although he acknowledges that the prodigious use of drugs must have played a part. I liked the way the city of Rome itself is a character, if a brutal, sordid, and almost disgusting one.

One thing I didn’t really like was the parallel story of the Dutch tourist. I’m not sure why it was included. It certainly does show how depraved and evil this pedophile was, but the main story was not about pedophilia but about murder. I suppose it was included because it shows the loopholes in Italian law.

Anyway, this was a very good book, that I wouldn’t recommend to anyone. I think a person needs to pick it up themselves read the book cover and then decide if they want to read about murder, rape, pedophilia, heavy drug use, etc., and the effect of these on the people left behind.

Anne Appplebaum’s Autocracy, Inc. is a short, readable and terrifying book. Her thrust is revealed in the chapter titles: The Greed that Binds, Kleptocracy Metastasizes, Controlling the Narrative e, Changing the Operating System, Smearing the Democrats (she is not talking about the US political party). In the book she talks about the interconnected ness of autocratic countries, kleptocracy, and media propaganda. I had no idea about how close the cooperation is among autocratic countries. Although they have very different pollical systems, cultures, and religions Iran will help Russia which helps Cuba, which helps North Korea, etc., etc. These countries, and the dictators that control them enable each other. Autocrats are united in their belief that the “west” wants to destroy or defeat them. Democrats are not united, which is what makes these countries vulnerable. In addition, western companies that only care about the bottom line and lining the pockets of CEOs and upper management bankroll these autocratic kleptocracies.

In any case, this is well worth reading if you are up to being very depressed by the end.

On the other hand, the US and the west get off a little too easily, and the book sometimes seems a little superficial. However, this is a short book and is best approached as an introduction to the subject. I know I learned a lot.

I didn’t like the ending. It is hopeful and feels a bit too optimistic (her dedication is “for the optimists”). This was written 2024, before President Trump took office for his second term. It seems we are following the road of the autocrats, so this last section seems a little like fantasy. I am not an optimist.

Behind Her Eyes is a thriller, and because of this, I won’t say too much, since I’m afraid that I would reveal spollers.

Suffice it to say that this is told from multiple POVs (Adele, Louise, and finally Rob) and chapters that reveal the post little by little. I truly couldn’t figure out what was behind everything. I thought this was well-done, despite my thinking that these characters were really stupid and some of their actions left me scratching my head. Nevertheless, I enjoyed it. However, the ending…it was certainly unexpected. I didn’t like it. I don’t mind fantasy, the supernatural, or magic in my reading, but I thought the ending was a cheat.

It was very good until that point.

Michael Nava is a gay lawyer and writer. In the 1980s he wrote a mystery series featuring Henry Rios, a gay defense attorney. I devoured this series when it first came out, and it is still one of my favorite series. The first novel in the series is A Little Death. Nava has revised/rewritten/reimagined this novel as Lay Your Head Down.

Of course, Henry Rios is still the main character. He is a young, burnt-out public defender, rapidly spiraling toward alcoholism. In the reworking, he has just quit his position as a public defender, since one of his innocent clients was just convicted and he can’t take it anymore. I believe this is a new plot point. However, as in A Little Death, he meets Hugh Paris, a young, good-looking (of course), junkie struggling to stay clean. An affair begins and lasts until Hugh is found dead, with a needle in his arm. Was this murder or the inevitable end of a drug addict? Added to this, Hugh’s body was found on the campus of Linden University (a lightly disguised Stanford University) and Hugh is a descendent of the founder of this University.

As in A Little Death, I raced through this novel. The writing is as good as I remembered, Henry is as sympathetic a character as I remembered, the plot is just as satisfying. Did it need to be rewritten? Perhaps not, although as I remember it, the original plot had several important differences. The two are different enough to stand on their own. So why is this not a five star for me. The original was a discovery—I had never read anything like it. The revised novel is as good as the original, but it doesn’t have that spark of discovery. Will I read more of the revised Henry Rios series? Absolutely.

Wild Houses is the debut novel of Colin Barrett, a prize-winning short story writer. It is novel about drugs, violence, alienation, and a kidnapping in rural western Ireland. I found it enormously sad.

The novel is told from alternating POVs. There is Dev, a veritable giant of a man, who is weak, introspective and afflicted with anxiety and depression. He has a good heart but has trouble standing up to people. And there is Nicky, the 17-year-old girlfriend of Doll, the boy who was kidnapped. She is smart and intelligent and probably won’t be staying in Ballina, the small Irish town where much of the story takes place. Though Dev and Nicky don’t know each other, they are two outsiders in Ballina. One is probably stuck there; one will probably leave.

I thought this novel was very, very well written. Individual sentences say exactly what they need to say, and nothing more. There is some dialect in the novel, but it is easily understood. But I had trouble getting into the story and identifying with the characters. However, by about half-way through the book, I was hooked and didn’t want to put it down.

By the end of the novel, I was emotionally connected to the characters, but the novel ends without any hint of what the future holds for Dev, Nicky, and Doll. I wish we could see their lives in five years’ time. I hope they are happy and settled wherever they might be.

Easy 4 stars. When I reread it, I might rate it higher.