Gregorio and Manuel were best friends. They both had a tattoo of a night buffalo, which Gregorio insisted was done with the same needle, so their blood would mingle. Since Manuel started sleeping with Gregorio’s girlfriend, the friendship had become increasingly difficult to live with. In the aftermath of Gregorio’s suicide Manuel struggles to get his life back on track. Everyone seems to suspect him of knowing more than he lets on and everyone seems to be keeping their own secrets, including his girlfriend. Most disturbingly Gregorio appears to still be watching him, letters from him appear through the post, containing enigmatic messages, ‘You won’t be able to run from the night buffalo’, they promise. Gregorio hadn’t finished dying yet. From the acclaimed writer of “Amores Perros” and “21 Grams”, this is the story of a passionate and destructive menage a trois and the tricks your mind can play on you.

Guillermo Arriaga is better known as a screenwriter, having collaborated with Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu in the films Amores Perros, 21 Grams, and, most recently, Babel. Those films are noted for their nonlinear narrative, resonant characters, and a lonely, desperate sensuality. Mr. arriaga brings this same distinctive touch to The Night Buffalo, his third novel.

Gregorio’s suicide is the catalyst of the story. Most shaken by this event are Manuel, Gregorio’s erstwhile best friend, and Tania, Gregorio’s ex- (and Manuel’s current) girlfriend. Manuel feels a sense of relief when Gregorio kills himself; the strain of Gregorio’s increasingly volatile behavior was beginning to wear on him and on his relationship with Tania, which was not exactly a stable one to begin with, as the two began their affair while Gregorio was going in and out of mental hospitals. However, Manuel’s expected respite does not occur as he planned; Gregorio has left him a box filled with notes and photos. These cryptic clues reveal more betrayals and more infidelity, and Manuel realizes that he still has not disentangled himself from Gregorio’s lies and manipulation. He seeks comfort from Tania, but Tania is wrestling with her own guilt and, naturally, questions her role in Gregorio’s illness and subsequent suicide. as Tania begins to pull away from him, Manuel begins his own exploration of betrayal and jealousy, culminating in a ghastly act of violence and the dissolution of their relationship.

The title of the novel refers to the matching buffalo tattoos on Manuel and Gregorio’s biceps, which they acquired to prove their loyalty to each other. When their friendship begins to fray, Manuel takes drastic measures – a knife and a rock – to remove the tattoo. The process leaves him with scars, and still the tattoo, though now diminished, remains. It’s a fairly obvious metaphor, but an effective one nonetheless.

The Night Buffalo starts off strong, as Manuel is a flawed, multilayered character. His struggle to understand Gregorio’s suicide while holding on to his fragile relationship with Tania is a guttural and visceral one; He is an easy character to sympathize with, despite his many faults and his obvious guilt. Through Nanuel’s eyes, the reader is taken through the nuances of his friendship with Gregorio: the lies, the deceit, the genuine affection, and also the fear one feels when someone they love has truly gone beyond their reach.

The women of the novel are not quite as clearly drawn, although this may have been a conscious choice to further illuminate the degree of Manuel’s internal turmoil. Still, this may have been a misstep, as Tania seems to be nothing more than the beautiful and elusive object of desire. Throughout the novel, I was unsure of her motivation. As with all the characters, a certain degree of guilt is implied, but is that enough to explain or, at the very least, excuse her actions? There are two women who Manuel says are madly in love with him, but other than a few lackluster couplings, there’s no other background given to support his statements. There is also a puzzling character introduced near the end of the novel, who seems to be nothing more than a filler designed to tie loose ends.

It is these shades of grey that lessen the novel’s impact. These unspoken nuances make the novel read better as a play; I couldn’t help but feel that it was raw material waiting for an actor’s interpretation. As a novelist, Mr. Arriaga is proficient; as a screenwriter, he is astonishing. Though “The Night Buffalo” wasn’t a total disappointment, I think I’m more excited to see the film version, as the writer has already proven that he is capable of incredible achievements in that medium.

“Certain things are better kept than said. . . .
But certain things you have to find out now. . . .”

On the tumultuous streets of Manila, where the earth is as brown as a tamarind leaf and the pungent smells of vinegar and mashed peppers fill the air, where seasons shift between scorching sun and torrential rain, eleven-year-old Gringo strives to make sense of his family and a world that is growing increasingly harsher before his young eyes.

There is Gringo’s older brother, Pipo, wise beyond his years, a flamboyant, defiant youth and the three-time winner of the sequined Miss Unibers contest; Daddy Groovie, whiling away his days with other hang-about men, out of work and wilting like a guava, clinging to the hope of someday joining his sister in Nuyork; Gringo’s mother, Estrella, moving through their ramshackle home, holding her emotions tight as a fist, which she often clenches in anger after curfew covers the neighborhood in a burst of dark; and Ninang Rola, wise godmother of words, who confides in Gringo a shocking secret from the past–and sets the stage for the profound events to come, in which no one will remain untouched by the jagged pieces of a shattered dream.

As Gringo learns; shame is passed down through generations, but so is the life-changing power of blood ties and enduring love.

In this lush, richly poetic novel of grinding hardship and resilient triumph, of selfless sacrifice and searing revelation, Bino A. Realuyo brings the teeming world of 1970s brilliantly to life. While mapping a young boy’s awakening to adulthood in dazzling often unexpected ways, The Umbrella Country subtly works sweet magic.

There is a tendency among expatriates to romanticize their homeland; I certainly understand such an impulse, being of the Filipino diaspora myself. Bino Realuyo does exactly this in and attempts to exorcise his past and his origins. In and of itself, that’s not a bad thing; the expatriate experience is rich, ever-evolving, and certainly deserves to be chronicled. However, it may be that more time needs to pass before the author can deliver his ideas in a more cohesive way.

The Umbrella Country is set in the Philippines against the backdrop of martial law, although the turbulence of that time is hardly felt and explored in the book. The book is narrated by Gringo, whose family is festering with poverty and bitterness. His father, Daddy Groovie, is a violent drunkard whose anger’s most frequent target is Pipo, Gringo’s older brother, whose secret homosexuality is becoming increasingly obvious. Their mother, Estrella, is silent and impenetrable, and the boys come to resent her indifference to her husband’s sadistic attacks. Ninang Rola, the boys’ godmother, provides them with the comfort their mother cannot impart, although Ninang Rola is not without her own secrets.

The Umbrella Country is a rather basic coming-of-age story, although Mr. Realuyo tries very hard to make it something more. In an interview included in the book, Mr. Realuyo states,

I am … trying to explore the strange and very complex nature of family bonds amid poverty and sometimes violent circumstances, while telling the quiet story of the Philippines during its most turbulent period. [The book is] also a coming-of-age for the country and all the characters.

Tolstoy wrote that “all happy families are happy alike, all unhappy families are unhappy in their own way,” but it seems that Mr. Realuyo didn’t get the memo, as he employs the many trite staples of both coming-of-age literature and ethnic literature – drunken father, silent mother, family secrets – and fails to spin anything new out of them. Using a child as a narrator is an ineffective choice; Gringo is far too precious and self-consciously lyrical to be credible as an eleven-year-old and, like all the other characters in this novel, is not so much a character as he is a mouthpiece.

Nowhere in the novel is there an indication of the Philippines “coming of age.” Mr. Realuyo’s skill as a writer is outweighed by his pretentiousness. Certainly, an inventive author can make numerous parallels between the oppression of the marcos dictatorship and the volatility of a violent household, but Mr. Realuyo fails to do that here.

To compare, F. Sionil Jose’s Rosales Novels details the Filipino uprising during the Spanish and American eras and further explores the formation of the Filipino identity by examining the brutality of the Marcos regime. Lualhati Bautista’s celebrated novel, Dekada ‘70, depicts the turmoil suffered by a middle-class family, the Bartolomes, when martial law was declared, as citizens were forced to question their place within society and within their own families. Dekada ‘70 illustrates both the quiet but bitter evolution of the family and the forceful insurrection of a country coming into its own. (Regrettably, Dekada ‘70 has, to my knowledge, never been translated to English.) That Mr. Realuyo’s novel is touted as a new, important voice when F. Sionil Jose and Lualhati Bautista have given far more accomplished and more compassionate depictions of the family and the Philippines is a disservice to the aforementioned writers and to their readers. Mr. Realuyo simplifies the complexity of both the Philippines and the family in crisis with his pedestrian, gimmicky writing, offering nothing more than the self-righteous moral superiority of the exile.

The hottest summer of the twentieth century. A tiny community of five houses in the middle of rural Italy. When the adults are sheltering indoors, six children venture out on their bikes across the scorched, deserted countryside. While exploring a dilapidated and uninhabited farmhouse, nine-year-old Michele Amitrano discovers a secret so momentous, so terrible, that he dare not tell anyone about it. To come to terms with what he has found, Michele has to draw strength from his own sense of humanity. The reader witnesses a dual story: the one that is seen through Michele’s eyes, and the tragedy involving the adults of this isolated hamlet. In this unforgiving landscape, dominated by the contrast between dazzling sunlight and the blackness of night, Ammaniti skillfully blends comedy, the world of children and their language, the strength of friendship, and the drama of betrayal. The result is an immensely lyrical and deftly narrated novel, a compelling portrait of losing one’s innocence and a powerful reflection on the complexities and compromises inherent in growing up. I’m Not Scared is the winnter of the 2001 Viareggio-Repaci Prize for Fiction and has already been sold in twenty languages.

I’m Not Scared takes place in 1978 during a recordbreaking heatwave in Italy. Michele and his friends while away the hours outside, playing games and taunting each other; the village children are free to get into more mischief as the adults are unable to tolerate the heat and prefer to stay indoors. One day, in an attempt to navigate the cruel politics of childhood, Michele is dared to enter a ramshackle, dilapidated house; naturally, refusal is not an option. As his friends wait outside, Michele explores the house and finds a boy trapped in a hole. Michele does not tell his friends of his discovery and vows to keep his silence as well as stay away from the creepy house. His curiosity gets the better of him, however, and he returns to the boy, determined to figure out how and why the boy came to be in the hole. Unfortunately, the boy won’t tell Michele his name and appears to be under the impression that he is already dead. Despite the extreme heat and the difficulty of the journey (the house is located up in the hills, a monumental journey for a nine-year-old), Michele visits the boy repeatedly; he begins to feel a persistent foreboding that the adults in his life are trying to hide something. His suspicions are confirmed when he hears the adults – his parents, his friends’ parents, and a mysterious, old man from Rome – arguing one night; the source of the ruckus is a news segment on television, wherein a beautiful, wealthy woman pleads for her son, Filippo, to be returned safely by the men who had kidnapped him.

Not much else can be revealed about I’m Not Scared without completely detailing the plot. However, that may give the impression that the novel is more intricate than it is; though there are quite a few twists and turns, they progress exactly as expected, which is what makes this read disappointing.

The protagonist is a pretty good creation, although not without flaws. There are a few tender moments between Michele and his younger sister, Maria, which show off Mr. Ammaniti’s skill at creating realistic, complex characters. Michele’s struggle between his conscience and loyalty is well-told, although he hardly seems like a child by the end of the novel. In addition, his voice is not consistent; some passages in the novel imply that he is looking back and recounting a tale from memory, but the ending suggests otherwise.

The author also excels at setting a great atmosphere, although sadly, the momentum of several chapters are ruined by weak climaxes. Initially, the village of Acqua Traverse feels like a sleepy, Mediterranean town, reflecting the lethargy and oppressiveness that Michele feels while trying to find something to pass the time. As the novel progresses, however, the novel has more of a gothic, claustrophobic atmosphere, echoing Michele’s increasing anxiety.

All things considered, the novel does not quite succeed in its intent. Its themes have been dealt with more skillfully and effectively in other works, like Stephen King’s The Body. In the end, reading I’m Not Scared is a bit like dancing to no music. All the above elements add up to an average, not great, novel.

Science writer Joe Rose is spending a day in the country with his long-time lover, Clarissa, when he witnesses a tragic accident–a balloon with a boy trapped in it is being tossed by the wind, and, in an attempt to save the child, a man is killed. As though that isn’t disturbing enough, a man named Jed Parry, who has joined Rose in helping to bring the balloon to safety, believes that something has passed between him and Rose–something that sparks in Parry a deranged, obsessive kind of love.

Soon Parry is stalking Rose, who turns to science to try to understand the situation. Parry apparently suffers from a condition known to psychiatrists as de Clerambault Syndrome, in which the afflicted individual obsessively pursues the object of his desire until the frustrated love turns to hate and rage–transforming one of life’s most valued experiences into pathological horror. As Rose grows more paranoid and terrified, as his treasured relationship with Clarissa breaks under the tension of his fear, Rose realizes that he needs to find something beyond the cold reasoning of science if this love is to be endured.

With the cool brilliance and deep compassion that defined his best novels (The Comfort of Strangers, The Innocent), Ian McEwan has once again spun a tale of life intruded upon by shocks of violence – and discovered profound truths about the nature of love and the power of forgiveness.

After spending several weeks apart, Joe Rose is enthusiastically waiting to see his wife, Clarissa. (Enthusiasm is the most appropriate description, not excitement, as Joe Rose is nothing if not coolly logical.) Clarissa and Joe are a quiet, intellectual couple: Clarissa is a professor who specializes in Keats, while Joe is a disappointed science writer who, despite being reduced to writing what he sees as pseudo-scientific articles, has achieved some success, allowing him to float on and be content. Joe has planned a picnic in the English countryside for their reunion, but they’ve barely opened their bottle of wine when a helium balloon, clearly out of control, comes drifting where they are picnicking.

Joe and four other men grab onto the ropes hanging from the basket, but they are lifted clean off the ground, and their notions of heroism vanish as they are raised higher by the wind. All but one of them let go of the ropes; John ’s misguided valor causes his death, and Joe says of witnessing the fall:

We watched him drop. … No forgiveness, no special dispensation for flesh, or bravery, or kindness. Only ruthless gravity. … He fell as he had hung, a stiff little black stick. I‘ve never seen such a terrible thing as that falling man.

All the witnesses are left shaken by the incident. Joe repeatedly asks himself, was he the first one to let go? Joe, being logical to a fault, rationalizes his behavior as the natural instinct for self-preservation, but this doesn’t prevent him from feeling waves of guilt at John ’s death. What seems to be the central conflict is now established, but Enduring Love, surprisingly, delves into something else entirely. After John Logan’s fall, Joe exchanges a look with Jed Parry, one of the other failed heroes, and this launches the real catastrophe: Jed falls madly (and i do mean madly, as in the obsessive sense) in love with Joe. Jed is convinced that Joe returns his love (in fact, he believes that Joe was the one to initiate the nonexistent affair) and begins to hang around outside his apartment, leave scores of messages on his answering machine, and write letters extolling the virtue of God’s, and by extension his, love.

Joe, ever the pragmatist, researches and discovers that Jed suffers from a condition called De Clerambault’s Syndrome. Jed’s persistence soon causes Joe to suffer from his own brand of mania, which triggers a rift between him and Clarissa (whom Joe accuses of being unsupportive) and brings about Joe’s old feelings of inadequacy about his profession. The logic Joe depends on cannot save him from Jed’s unwanted and increasingly aggressive affection, so Joe abandons logic altogether and buys a gun from his one-time drug dealer to deal with Jed decisively.

Enduring Love is a narrative tour de force that traverses the timorous bridge between science and emotion, as well as the areas in which those two things overlap. This is not a breathless Fatal Attraction-type redux; the novel attempts to tackle obsession, guilt, delusion, and love, and all the gray areas wherein all those things intersect. Surprisingly, it succeeds and does so damn near flawlessly.

The title certainly refers to Jed’s obsessive love for Joe, as Joe and Clarissa’s marriage is in tatters by the end of the novel (although it is implied in the fictional appendix that the two managed to reconcile, it doesn’t quite match the singular, relentless devotion that Jed has shown Joe). The characters were all deserving of sympathy (yes, even the wretched sociopath that is Jed Parry) and richly constructed, despite Joe’s restricted point of view. Like his protagonist, Mr. McEwan’s tone is one of aloofness. There were times when Joe’s stubborn rationalism was maddening, but it is consistent with the point that Mr. McEwan is making: that some emotions cannot be explained away by science, and that the things that define us – our love for the people we share our lives with – are unpredictable and ambiguous by nature.

Hailed by critics and writers as powerful, important fiction, Monkey Bridge charts the unmapped territory of the Vietnamese American experience in the aftermath of war. Like navigating a monkey bridge–a bridge, built of spindly bamboo, used by peasants for centuries–the narrative traverses perilously between worlds past and present, East and West, in telling two interlocking stories: one, the Vietnamese version of the classic immigrant experience in America, told by a young girl; and the second, a dark tale of betrayal, political intrigue, family secrets, and revenge–her mother’s tale. The haunting and beautiful terrain of Monkey Bridge is the “luminous motion,” as it is called in Vietnamese myth and legend, between generations, encompassing Vietnamese lore, history, and dreams of the past as well as of the future. “With incredible lightness, balance and elegance,” writes Isabel Allende, “[Lan Cao crosses] over an abyss of pain, loss, separation and exile, connecting on one level the opposite realities of Vietnam and North America, and on a deeper level the realities of the material world and the world of the spirits.”

Monkey Bridge is the story of Mai and Thanh, recent immigrants to America from Vietnam. Through the kindness of Uncle Michael, an American GI and family friend, Mai was able to leave before the fall of Saigon; her mother, Thanh, followed through the American airlift shortly after. The novel highlights the struggle for Mai and her mother to assimilate in America. For Mai, the struggle is not too difficult. Within a few months, she has learned to appreciate America’s shopping malls, has gotten used to the chill of Virginia, and speaks American English without a Vietnamese accent. For Thanh, the adjustment is more challenging. In Vietnam, Thanh’s French convent school education gave her fluency in French and a love for the French classics. In America, she is just another immigrant who spoke no English.

In their effort to assimilate, Mai and her mother have ignored the riddle that continues to prey on their minds: on the day that her mother was airlifted out of Saigon, Mai’s grandfather, Baba Quan, was left behind. Mai is confused by her mother’s alternating grief for and seeming indifference to Baba Quan. When Thanh suffers a stroke, Mai hears her call out for Baba Quan. This incident sparks Mai’s resolve to find her grandfather, because she believes Baba Quan is the only person who can ease Thanh’s disquiet.

Lan Cao has clearly written an autobiographical novel. In the book’s jacket, the author is described as having left Vietnam in 1975. The photo, naturally, is the requisite black and white. Lan Cao is wearing black, standing against a stark background with her arms folded, unsmiling. Clearly, this is a very serious book about a very serious subject from a very serious writer.

Lan Cao, however, cannot quite reach her ambition. That’s not to say that “Monkey Bridge” is altogether bad. The descriptions of Little Saigon will ring true for any immigrant who has tried to find a familiar enclave in their adoptive country. Mrs. Bay, Thanh’s best friend, is touching in her zeal; she is so grateful to be given a fresh start that she maintains a cheerful disposition each day, despite her fears for Vietnam. Compared to the flatness of Thanh and Mai, Mrs. Bay is full of life, and it is the passages where she was included that I read with the most enjoyment.

Unfortunately, Monkey Bridge is so clearly autobiographical that the author muddles the narrative. The story itself is interesting, but its execution is ungainly and full of amateur touches. The ending felt cheap and shoddy, complete with maudlin melodrama and a big reveal that came out of nowhere like a bat out of hell. What makes Monkey Bridge so disappointing is that the author was unable to mold such rich, raw experience into something great. Mai had this to say about her mother, Thanh, and it sums up my discontent with this novel:

We were both in the space where all things linger, only to turn unpredictably with the exquisite swiftness of a hard flower. We all enter this space when we wait – for motionless shadows to shift with a moment’s notice, and hopes to become possibilities.

Like Mai, I too held my breath, waiting for the author to spin a tale that would captivate. Sadly, Lan Cao did not deliver because she was unsure whether she wanted to write a novel or a memoir; in the end, Monkey Bridge succeeds as neither.

With her stunning debut collection of stories, The Girl in the Flammable Skirt, Aimee Bender showed herself to be “a writer who makes you glad for the very existence of language” San Francisco Chronicle. The book was a sensation; it spent seven weeks on The Los Angeles Times bestseller list, received ecstatic reviews nationwide, and established Aimee Bender as one of the freshest and most original voices in American fiction.

In An Invisible Sign of My Own, Aimee Bender exceeds her early promise. She gives us the story of Mona Gray, a second-grade math teacher who has just turned twenty–a number which, like all numbers in her life, seems to have a profound significance. Mona lives her life under the shadow of her father’s long, weird, unnamed illness and her own bizarre compulsions. She excels at music, running, and sex, but ceases each activity just at the moment enjoyment becomes intense: Mona is “in love with quitting.” Only numbers provide the order and beauty she craves. “Mix up some numbers and you get an equation for the way the wind shifts or an axiom for the movement of water, or the height of someone, or for how skin feels. You can account for softness. You can explain everything.” With construction paper and Magic Markers, Mona arranges her classroom into “a beautiful museum of numbers,” but that could also describe her life: a collection of oddities, a static place, a hushed and insular world where disruption is unwelcome. Then the science teacher arrives, with burn marks on his fingers and a genius for teaching children the joys of coughing, and Mona’s strange and tidy universe is threatened by love, the supreme disorder. In her luminous, pitch-perfect prose, Bender conjures a dream world much like our own, a fairy tale grounded in a penetrating sense of what moves the human heart.

Like in her collection of short stories, The Girl In The Flammable Skirt, Aimee Bender once again gives us a surreal tale of suburban malaise and magical realism. As expected, the protagonist, Mona Gray, is both endearing and eccentric, having had a nearly lifelong love affair with quitting. Mona always seems to be on the verge of mentally imploding (and physically as well, after buying an ax on her 20th birthday) but she keeps her demons at bay by soothing herself with math and numbers, which are solid and dependable and not subject to the random catastrophes that make up a life.

To ward off her father’s impending death from a mysterious and unnamed illness, Mona practices self-denial and cultivates a series of tics. Despite being a gifted runner, Mona quits the high school track team, because “winning is lonely;” the reason behind her statement becomes clear when it is revealed that her father, now a shadowy, lonesome figure in her life, used to be a champion runner. When Mona feels any sexual desire, she eats soap, causing herself to vomit soap bubbles. Mona buys an ax on her 20th birthday and contemplates cutting off various parts of her body, a morbid exchange to keep her father alive. She knocks on wood constantly; if there’s no wood available, she will knock on paper or a pencil, reasonable facsimiles as both things were at least born of trees.

The rituals and superstitions that comprise Mona’s life are disrupted when she becomes a second-grade teacher, despite her lack of a degree and/or experience. Although she was initially reticent to take the job, Mona finds that she shines in the classroom; in fact, teaching gives her the appearance of the order she craves. Of course, Mona’s newfound orderliness doesn’t last as such an environment necessitates that she become emotionally involved in her students’ lives; causing further disarray is Benjamin Smith, the mysterious science teacher who can look past her tics. Mona, however, is so fearful of making a connection that she immediately eats a bar of soap when she gets him to come back to her apartment.

An Invisible Sign of My Own is written in a minimalistic but inventive style. There are times when the surrealism feels a bit forced (surely not everyone in town has a cute identifying quirk?) but Ms. Bender quickly regains her footing. The characters were a bit one-note, especially Benjamin Smith, who serves as the love interest and not much more; he helps Mona experience an epiphany but the reader doesn’t learn much about him beyond that. Part of the problem is that Ms. Bender cannot sustain the surreal atmosphere all throughout her novel, although this same surrealism was pitch perfect in her short stories.

Ms. Bender also spends a lot of time on detail, and such is her gift that these long, detailed narratives do not feel like a chore to read. The passage glides along, limpid and wistful, and suddenly Ms. Bender will succinctly snap the reader to attention:

…When you walk down the street, and you happen upon a baby carriage with a baby inside it, and you peer in the blue awning, the scalloped edges, the squirmy flesh inside, there is one simple given: if all goes right, this baby will live in the world longer than you.

It is all about numbers. It is all about sequence. It’s the mathematical logic of being alive. If everything kept to its normal progression, we would live with the sadness – cry and then walk – but what really breaks us cleanest are the losses that happen out of order.

That alone can summarize the central theme of this novel: that of loss, how it’s never really possible to recover from it, and the lengths that we will go to for the people we love. Don’t let the diaphanous quality of Aimee Bender’s writing fool you. Hers is an understated talent, and a great one, for despite the absurdist quality of her work, she manages to find in them a way to eloquently express her own grief.

A riveting novel about loyalty and self-knowledge, and the conflict between who we want to be to others and who we must be for ourselves.

Carrie Bell has lived in all her life. She’s had the same best friend, the same good relationship with her mother, the same boyfriend, Mike, now her fiancé, for as long as anyone can remember. It’s with real surprise she finds that, at age twenty-three, her life has begun to feel suffocating. She longs for a change, an upheaval, for a chance to begin again.

That chance is granted to her, terribly, when Mike is injured in an accident. Now Carrie has to question everything she thought she knew about herself and the meaning of home. She must ask: How much do we owe the people we love? Is it a sign of strength or of weakness to walk away from someone in need?

The Dive from Clausen’s Pier reminds us how precarious our lives are and how quickly they can be divided into before and after, whether by random accident or by the force of our own desires. It begins with a disaster that could happen, out of the blue, in anybody’s life, and it forces us to ask how we would bear up in the face of tragedy and what we know, or think we know, about our deepest allegiances. Elegantly written and ferociously paced, emotionally nuanced and morally complex, The Dive from Clausen’s Pie marks the emergence of a prodigiously gifted new novelist.

The Dive from Clausen’s Pier tells the story of small-town girl Carrie’s struggle to break free from expectations, both hers and other people’s. She doesn’t have the courage to leave her boyfriend/fiance, Mike Mayer, so she instead acts cold and distant. Poor Mike also struggles but for a different reason: he wants to regain what he and Carrie have lost before they are forced to actually acknowledge its presence. This is what leads him to jump off Clausen’s Pier and break his neck, rendering him a quadriplegic. Carrie, naturally, is filled with guilt (but not necessarily tears as the novel uses countless pages to describe Carrie’s lack of tears) as she knows very well that it’s her emotional distance that caused Mike to jump off the pier. Tensions arise between Carrie & her friends and Carrie & Mike’s family, who are aware that she is pulling away from Mike, and had in fact been pulling away from him before the accident occurred. Unable to bear the pressure from her loved-ones and herself, Carrie decides to take off for New York without telling anyone. A spur-of-the-moment trip lasts months, and why shouldn’t it? Carrie is away from her family and from poor Mike for the first time in her young life. She embarks on an emotionally conflicting but sexually satisfying affair with Kilroy, who gives her excitement and the thrill of newness, but not much else. The freedom exhilarates her, but as the reader knows before Carrie does, it’s only a matter of time before regrets, guilt, and loyalty will her to come back to Madison.

The story itself is not remarkable. The plot is laid out for the reader from the very beginning, as the prologue begins with the novel’s most pivotal moment. That promising start stops abruptly once Carrie settles in New York. It’s really solid writing, but I can’t help but feel that Ms. Packer is writing to impress her high school English teacher. The novel has all the necessary elements readers have come to expect from Literature with a capital L: mundane activities serving as metaphors for deeper maladies (Kilroy’s inability to commit is illustrated when he is revealed as a compulsive radio station switcher in the car) and characters struggling to articulate their desires. (Carrie’s frustration and indecision is demonstrated through the various fabrics she uses to sew various pieces of clothing that she never gets around to wearing). How precious.

Having said that, i do admire Ms. Packer’s emotional generosity to her characters. Not once does she adopt a judgmental tone towards Carrie’s betrayal of the life she used to lead. Kilroy, who is a beguiling cipher but a cipher nonetheless, holds surprising emotional weight. Ms. Packer also has a refreshing ear for dialogue; her characters don’t come off as mere mouthpieces. The characters feel real, exasperating, and, in the end, worthy of redemption and forgiveness. This is what makes The Dive from Clausen’s Pier worth reading. I just wish that Ms. Packer had actually provided some sort of resolution for Carrie. Instead, Ms. Packer chose the safe route, which is ultimately what doomed what could have been a very good novel into just average, Lifetime-for-Women fodder. It’s good writing, but it’s self-conscious and calculated writing, and all the smoke and mirrors that Ms. Packer employs can’t distract from this flaw. In the end, Carrie’s risks, just like the novel itself, amount to not very much at all.

At the height of China’s Cultural Revolution a powerful general fathered two sons. Tan was born to the general’s wife and into a life of comfort and luxury. His half brother, Shento, was born to the general’s mistress, who threw herself off a cliff in the mountains of Balan only moments after delivering her child. Growing up, each remained ignorant of the other’s existence. In Beijing, Tan enjoyed the best schools, the finest clothes, and the prettiest girls. Shento was raised on the mountainside by an old healer and his wife until their deaths landed him in an orphanage, where he was always hungry, alone, and frightened. Though on divergent roads, each brother is driven by a passionate desire—one to glorify his father, the other to seek revenge against him.

Separated by distance and opportunity, Tan and Shento follow the paths that lie before them, while unknowingly falling in love with the same woman and moving toward the explosive moment when their fates finally merge.

Brothers, by bestselling memoirist Da Chen, is a sprawling, dynamic family saga, complete with assassinations, love affairs, narrowly missed opportunities, and the ineluctable fulfillment of destiny.

Brothers tells the old familiar story of rivalry and bitterness between brothers (or half-brothers, as it were). Tan and Shento are the sons of the General Ding Long, a member of the illustrious Long clan, which has political ties to Chairman Mao. Tan, being the legitimate son, is privy to a world of private schools, chauffeurs, and society parties; Shento, as the bAstard son, lives in the remote area of Balan with the old couple who adopted him. After a myriad of implausible events, Shento lands in an orphanage and Tan’s family goes into exile in the remote province the Longs came from.

Sumi Wo is the long-suffering, (stereotypically) saintly female protagonist who charms the pants off of both Shento and Tan. (What a coincidence, eh?) Shento gets dibs as he met Sumi first; they are both orphans with grand dreams of life beyond the orphanage. Tan meets sumi in his family’s ancestral village and is (of course) immediately enthralled by her beauty and intelligence.

Brothers is told from the perspective of Tan and Shento in alternating chapters, with Sumi and a few minor characters cluttering up the narrative with their own (unnecessary) few chapters. The structure of the novel is damaged by Da Chen’s indecision as to whether to use an omniscient narrator or to write from his characters’ perspectives; by using both, the book comes off as sophomoric and poorly constructed.

The novel is filled with unnatural, forced dialogue, as in p. 289, when Sumi tries to articulate her pain at Shento’s absence.

…Many times…I wished…[t]hat I had taken those bullets in my head, and that you were the survivor, walking with our child in the mountains, climbing over the peaks…to see the sunshine of tomorrow. I would have been happy and content being a silent ghost…hoping that you would find Tai Ping a mother to care for him and a virtuous wife to love you as I would have…I would have been jealous but not angry, for I would be dead, living in the dark side of life, and you all belonged to the light…

It does not read well, does it? The dialogue sounds like magical-realism-by-the-numbers. Far more offensive than the clunky language, though, is Da Chen’s seeming worship of the power of the…er…penis. Apparently, Da Chen thinks it is believable for a woman (in this case, Sumi) to ask her lover (in this case, Shento), after she is raped to “…Make me clean, please. If you will have me, I swear to the mother moon that I be wedded to you in the grace of her embrace.” That line had me howling with incredulous laughter and cringing uncomfortably. The inappropriately timed sex also occurs to Tan (Shento and Tan are brothers, after all, with fates inexplicably entwined), who finally gets to bed his sexy English teacher, Miss Yu, after he rescues her from detainment due to her subversive activities (in this case, notions of democracy).

However, such implausible events, in the hands of a gifted writer, can seem possible. It requires a certain wit and finesse, though, that I didn’t encounter in Da Chen’s “Brothers.” I think Da Chen himself, through Tan’s description of Sumi’s memoirs, summed up his writing style best:

…All other books, in the grand tradition of Chinese literature, were flowery and pompous, a showcase of a writer’s breadth of knowledge, his command of language, and maneuvers of fancy styles.

Magical realism requires an author who can make the reader suspend belief, like Gabriel Garcia Marquez, who wrote about incest and pretty girls eating mud in One Hundred Years of Solitude, without it seeming forced or unnatural. Da Chen’s heavy-handed, self-conscious prose does not quality him as one of those authors.

Once Were Warriors is Alan Duff’s harrowing vision of his country’s indigenous people two hundred years after the English conquest. In prose that is both raw and compelling, it tells the story of Beth Heke, a Maori woman struggling to keep her family from falling apart, despite the squalor and violence of the housing projects in which they live. Conveying both the rich textures of Maori tradition and the wounds left by its absence, Once Were Warriors is a masterpiece of unblinking realism, irresistible energy, and great sorrow.

Reading this book was such a colossal chore, which is why I didn’t finish it. Don’t quote me but I believe F. Scott Fitzgerald once dismissed Jack Kerouac’s novels as an example of “typing, not writing.” I believe the same sentiment applies here.

Once Were Warriors focuses on the Hekes, a Maori family living (if it can be called that) in the slum of Pine Block; the Hekes’ home is directly adjacent to the palatial mansion of the pakeha (meaning white, and therefore much loathed, apparently) Tramberts. Way to kick a brother when he’s down, right? Beth and Jake are both too drunk and disillusioned to care much for their kids: Nig, who has joined the local gang; Boogie, who was sentenced to a juvenile correctional facility (his parents were unable to attend the sentencing as they were both too hungover and Jake had beaten beth to a pulp the night before); and Grace, who is the fragile, sensitive girl and, in keeping with Alan Duff’s cliched characterizations, is doomed by her situation.

There are several things that make this novel hard to read. Alan Duff does not write in the conventional way; his sentences lack punctuation and are often grammatically and syntactically incorrect (hence the comparison to Jack Kerouac). The characters are bogged down by Mr. Duff’s persistently morbid vision and simplistic moralizing; Mr. Duff then does a 180 and resorts to cheap sappiness for the ending (which I won’t reveal here).

That’s not to say that the book wasn’t emotionally stirring. Given the state of race relations here in the US, I’m sure that many American readers would be able to relate or would at least be familiar with the Hekes’ situation. But the author’s aggressively dismal tone throughout the book ruins the reading experience; the characters never emerge from their roles as the bitter outcasts, and Mr. Duff’s (misguided) political and social grandstanding show that he has no sympathy for his own characters. Mr. Duff’s self-important moralizing screams of arrogance and self-satisfaction.

So, yes, Once Were Warriors is thought-provoking (although that’s not necessarily meant in a positive way), but is it good writing? I’m inclined to say, no, absolutely not.

What books did you love as a child?
Submitted by hearts.

The Dark is Rising Sequence by Susan Cooper has been a favorite since the fourth grade. The books relate the story of the eternal battle between the Light and the Dark. These books should be right up there with The Lord of the Rings, The Chronicles of Narnia, and Harry Potter, but they are woefully underrated and underappreciated.

The sequence is imbued with Celtic, Welsh, and English folklore, as it is set in Cornwall and Wales and has requisite appearances by Herne the Hunter and the Pendragon. There are five books in the sequence.

Over Sea, Under Stone introduces the three Drew children – Simon, Jane, and Barney – as they holiday in Cornwall with their great-uncle Merriman Lyon. They find a map in the attic, which they take as a sign to pursue adventure. The children don’t realize that by finding the map, they have become part of a very real quest, and their great-uncle Merry is revealed to be someone of great importance. There are caves and beaches and sinister enemies and friends later revealed to be enemies and Arthurian legends and many other things that will stimulate the reader’s imagination. Great book, although it’s not quite as complex as the other books in the series.

The Dark is Rising is the story of Will Stanton. On his eleventh birthday, it is revealed to him that he is the last of the Old Ones, warriors of the Light and enemies of the Dark. Like the Drew children, he must take part in a quest for the Things of Power (in Will’s case, the Six Signs; in the Drew children’s case, the Grail) to prepare for the final battle with the Dark. Will is helped in his quest by Merry Lyon, who is the first of the Old Ones.

Greenwitch reintroduces the Drew children, who have returned to Cornwall after the Grail they had recovered in Over Sea, Under Stone was stolen from the British Museum. Merry and Will join them in their quest. The Drews are initially hostile to Will, who is close to their age but sometimes seems to usurp authority and is given special attention by great-uncle Merry. This book is essentially Jane Drew’s tale, who, like the Greenwitch, is the only girl in the boys’ club and who feels that she is always somewhat overshadowed and underappreciated. Through Jane’s actions, the Greenwitch surrenders the Thing of Power in her possession – in this case, a scroll that will translate the symbols on the Grail. This is the weakest book in the series, but still worth a read.

The Grey King is the story of Bran Davies, an albino boy who lives in Wales with his stepfather. After a bout with hepatitis, Will has forgotten his role as the last of the Old Ones; his memory is reawakened after he goes to Wales to recuperate. This time, Will is the guide as he helps Bran Davies realize his destiny as the Pendragon.

Silver on the Tree brings together all the characters introduced in the previous four books. This really is a fitting end to the sequence, although by no means does it leave all questions answered. It is commendable of Susan Cooper that the series does not end tritely, with everyone living happily ever after.

I first read these books in the fourth grade; my copies are now well-worn and well-loved, but I still read the sequence every year. The Dark is Rising Sequence is superior to The Lord of the Rings in that the reader is not overwhelmed by the sheer complexity of its self-contained mythos, and it’s better than The Chronicles of Narnia and Harry Potter because the writing is not quite as child-like; I almost don’t want to label The Dark is Rising Sequence as fantasy/young-adult fiction, just because it seems to diminish the quality of the plot and the writing. The Dark is Rising should be spoken of with as much reverence as those other anthologies. Incidentally, Liz, if you’re reading this, you would probably like these books and should immediately check them out if you haven’t read them. ^_^