Grace Winter is in London for a quickie and quiet wedding, her marriage to wealthy Henry happening just in time to save her from governess-hood. The year is 1914, the archduke Ferdinand and his wife are suddenly assassinated, and impending war has sent Henry and his new bride scurrying for home. Henry’s high society family in Boston has yet to be informed of the marriage (and an ex-fiancee even promises to meet the boat) but Grace is confident that she can win them over (and blow ex-fiancee away), much as she very deliberately won her delightful husband. Her plans go off course, however, when the steamer they are traveling on suffers an explosion, the passengers are off-loaded into life boats, and the nightmare of survival begins. From the very first scene, it is clear that Grace’s maxim, “God helps those who helps themselves” is the rule of the sea, aided by the sidebar of “and don’t help others”: men trying to climb onto Grace’s lifeboat are mercilessly knocked aside with oars, and a child clinging to his dead mother and calling for help is left on his own, drifting in the cold sea.

What happens in the ensuing weeks at sea we find out through the diary of Grace, written while she is awaiting trial for murder. Through her eyes we see how in the boat authority exists alongside its counterpart of repression, control is exacted through petty machinations, and the manipulation of weaknesses is just as vital as the exercise of willpower. The lines blur between goodness and evil, God and the Devil, man and woman, action and inaction. The boat becomes a microcosm of the outside world, a world at war, a society in the throes of change, and the twentieth century being born.

As a parable of the modern world, The Lifeboat is a downer. After all, when “those who help themselves” prevail, the greatest good for the self-helpers is not always such good news for everybody else. But sometimes it takes a downer to spark meaningful discourse about the wavering lines between good and evil. My belief in humanity — kindness, compassion, aid –holds but my understanding of the abyss that waits on either side of authority and repression, faith and control, dominance and submission is deeper than ever before, for having been a passenger on The Lifeboat.

Nathan Englander, on the other hand, is a writer who experiments with styles and tones, displaying different skills of character, place and plot. Although he works along a continuum of the Jewish experience, his stories — so varied in approach and in expression — vary in impact, and in satisfaction. His latest collection, What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank, includes some stories I loved, like the title selection, which dissects, in a perfectly rendered moment-by-moment reunion of old friends, the nature of relationships; Sister Hills, a legend-style story of Israel; and Camp Sundown, where the question of justice unravels along the shores of a Jewish summer camp. All three share a pacing in structure and a lovely light touch mixed with very heavy meaning that made these stories distinctively Englander — and illustrative of some aspect of humanity. But the other stories fell apart for me, some rather painfully so (Peep Show); and others because they seemed to be showcases of Englander’s skill but devoid of any actual illumination of a feeling or event or person (Free Fruit for Young Widows and The Reader).

I want illumination, not just skill. And when people talk about Englander (he is causing lots of talk and garnering lots of praise with his latest collection), they seem to mostly talk about his skill, his ability to be both funny and serious, to create situations that are sharply focussed and rich in detail. But where is the illumination? Where is the deeper pounding at what matters, meaning of life and all that? I found it in a few of his stories — as mentioned above — and so when I talk about Nathan Englander, I am talking about a writer still developing, not only his signature style but his commitment to broadening his readers’ experience — and understanding — of life.

House of the Hunted by Mark Mills goes back in history also, setting us up first in Bolshevik Russia to witness a double cross and the horrible revenge taken for it, and then forward to the 1930s, when one of the men involved finds himself re-involved all over again. Mills does a marvelous job setting the landscape — the horrors of Petrograd after the Revolution and the pleasures of southern France in the 1930s — and all I could think when I finished this book was “When’s the next one coming out?” I cannot wait to see what happens down the road with ex-spy and (my) current-hearthrob Thomas Nash. So please, Mills, get to work!

Donna Leon’s latest Commissario Guido Brunetti mystery, Beastly Things, made me cry, for different reasons and in different places, and as always, her novel made me long for Venice. Brunetti himself recognizes the unique beauty of the city he lives in (he’s not blind, after all, and he is intelligent and observant, so of course he sees the beauty all around him!) but in this book he’s forced out of the city of canals and into a car: “Brunetti marvelled again at how it was possible for people to live like this: driving around in cars, getting stuck behind long columns of other cars, eternal victims of the vagaries of traffic…No wonder drivers were prone to violence: how could they not be?”

But it was not Brunetti’s astute assessment of car culture that made me cry; it was his case-driven exposure to the meat industry. Sure, regulations are in place in the EU just as they are here, that require humane treatment of animals and the slaughtering of only healthy cows and pigs to ensure meat safe for human consumption culture. But just who is overseeing these regulations? As Brunetti concludes, digging deeper and deeper into this case of fraud, murder, and deceit, “Lust or jealousy might lead to impulsive actions or violence, but to explain most crimes, especially those that took place over time, greed was the better bet.”
All crying aside, Beastly Things is another great installment in the story of Brunetti and a stirring strike against all kinds of greed, including greed for meat.

Deborah Crombie’s No Mark Upon Her is the latest in her Duncan Kincaid/Gemma James mysteries and it is a winner on all counts. A rower on the Thames is found dead, the body located with the help by search and rescue dogs, and the curving lines of culpability must be worked out through increasingly shrouded lines of enquiry — the powerful are at evil play here! Kincaid and James must watch their backs, while also trying to keep key witnesses and possible perpetrators alive. The world of elite rowing, the machinations of search and rescue, the inner-weavings of office politics: all are illuminated in this compelling mystery. And Crombie also does what she always does so well: she explores the nature of human connections and the tragedies that arise out of frayed or twisted contact — what goes wrong when the lights go out.

As anyone who has read my reviews knows, I am a great believer in joy. We live in cycles of joy and sorrow, and The Snow Child adds another dimension to those cycles: we live in cycles of faith and disbelief as well, and is it any coincidence that faith in possibilities runs parallel to the discovery of joy? As Mabel says, in speaking about joy (and I love how she has given joy the female pronoun): “When she stands before you with her long, naked limbs and mysterious smile, you must embrace her while you can.” Because snow melts, and moments fade, and life goes on. Embrace joy in all seasons, not only this lovely season of revival and new flowers and warmer weather, but through all the turns of the year, and of life.

The final clincher for me with The Snow Child was the use of letters to allow certain characters — including one who remains off stage throughout — to amplify their selves and embody the meanings of their existence. Mabel’s sister writes, first in offering a gift of wisdom to Mabel way off in Alaska, “We are allowed …to invent our own endings and choose joy over sorrow….” and adds, in a later admission of Mabel’s hitherto unacknowledged strength, “There is no harm in finding magic among the trees.” Joy is possible through the magic we find in among the trees, and among each other. I love this book.

And then the shivers down the spine started. WHICH novel? I tried to go back over the books I’ve read lately: The Odds by Stewart O’Nan; Dorchester Terrace by Anne Perry (coming out in April); Chomp by Carl Hiassen; Poor Folk by Dostoyevsky; The Flight of Gemma Hardy by Margot Livesey. But none of those books had that quotation….so which book did?

During the past four years I have written hundreds of book reviews here on my site. Those reviews were a wonderful way for me not only to share great books with others but to coalesce for myself what the book meant to me and what I wished to carry with me as I move forward. Now that I’ve begun working on another book, my book about letters, I am reading more than ever (well, not more than in my year of reading a book a day) — I am not only reading novels and essays and mysteries for pleasure, but I am also reading collections of letters, biographies, and histories. What I am not doing, however, is keeping track of what I’m reading. I’ve left off the reviewing, and no longer copy favorite quotes into my trusty notebook of favorite quotes. A notebook I’ve maintained on and off for over thirty-plus years — and now I’ve stopped?

What a loss! To keep track of what I read is to keep a diary of my life. And when I lose track of what I’ve read, I lose track of where I’ve been through the glory of books. Even worse, I risk losing the way to where I am going, because the path forward is best lined with the joys and wisdom and humor of the past, including all the riches I’ve gleaned from reading. Great good comes from reading great books — and from remembering them.

One of my favorite poets, Adrienne Rich, died on Tuesday. She wrote beautiful and powerful poetry, and she shared so much of herself, including wisdom gained through experience, in her poems. Her poem, Stepping Backward, is about taking the time to see the fullness of an experience, of a person whom we might see daily but still fail to see completely. Rich advises to step backward for a second look, “because we live by inches and only sometimes see the full dimension…”

It is important to step backward not only to look at the people in our lives, but at the moments in our lives. “Live in the moment”: yes, I know the mantra. But it is just as vital to be able to look back and re-live those special moments. And in order to look backwards, I have to remember where I was back then, back there. For me, books are a vital part of back then and back there. So I am re-committed to my quotation notebook and to my blog, here. I will not be reviewing all the books I read, but I will be tracking them. Because I understand the importance of keeping track. To paraphrase a line from Tolstoy and the Purple Chair, I choose to live looking backward, remembering the past, but also moving forward, with anticipation and excitement. So many great books I’ve read, and so many still waiting for me.

On my list of must-reads? Adichie’s novels Purple Hibiscus and Half of a Yellow Sun.

My review of October 3, 2009, entitled
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie: The Truth Around Your Life
“There are many beautifully-wrought stories in the collection The Thing Around Your Neck by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, and every one of them rings with truth. Most of the stories left me wanting more, hoping for novels rising from the bones of the story, and answers to “what happens next?” Adichie is very good at creating quickly but with full depth of character, people that I care about, and putting them in viscerally-etched situations that are immediate and dire (whether of life or of spirit). Although she can easily portray either sex and all ages and classes, she is at her very best in presenting women without wide choices but with the quiet strength to make the most of what is offered. She celebrates the endurance of women circumscribed by tradition or poverty or custom who move beyond their defined places to find more for themselves and in themselves. These women are able to bridge the Nigeria they are rooted in and the new world (either literally or figuratively) that they have found or made for themselves.

The exception to this is the first story, “Cell One”, which is not about a woman and her connections to Nigeria, but is instead about the country itself. It is a powerful but quietly stated history of modern Nigeria. A young women witnesses the changes wrought in her own brother under a regime that is changing the entire country of Nigeria. The parallels between her brother and her country are understated but precise: the ability to manipulate, the perception of invulnerability and being above the rules of society, and the horror of realizing all that can be lost when society breaks down. There is hope at the end of the story in the brother’s stand against cruelty, but there is also sadness, in the shadow that will from now on preside over him.

In “The Headstrong Historian”, Adichie combines a longer history of Nigeria with a truly compelling story of a maternal line that passes on strength and traditions between a grandmother and her granddaughter. Both are historians, the grandmother for her knowledge of the past and her understanding of how integrally past and present are connected, and the granddaughter for her understanding of the “clear link between education and dignity, between the hard, obvious things that are printed in books and the soft, subtle things that lodge themselves in the soul.” It is a struggle between what the western male has deemed history-worthy of Africa, and what these two African women know is the full history of their place on the continent. When Grace returns to Africa and reclaims the African name her grandmother gave her, it was a moment of pure joy in reading.

In “Jumping Monkey Hill”, that same contradiction between the western male view of what is interesting in African and the African’s experience is presented in the context of a writers workshop. Adichie ‘s portray of the workshop is so acute and genuine that I felt queasy: the power of the organizer and his intention to use that power for sexual advantage; the awful judgments passed on works of the attending writers; and the attempts of the writers to assert themselves against the white and western hold of power in terms of agents and publishing and recognition. Again this story ended with a moment of pure reading joy, when a writer who is tired of being manipulated by the men in power in all aspects of her life (her father, her would-be employers, and now the organizer of the workshop), lands a bomb of truth in the midst of the posturing and falsity of the workshop.

In “Shivering”, a Nigerian woman cannot face the truth of her life until an erstwhile friend confronts her with the facts of her boyfriend’s behavior: “Maybe it wasn’t love….Udenna did this to you and Udenna did that to you, but why did you let him? Why did you let him? Have you ever considered that it wasn’t love?“ That moment of recognition — that turning point in life when a person realizes that what was always thought to be true is not true — is present in every one of Adichie’s ‘ stories. Revealing truth is not only a motif of Adichie’s stories but a characteristic of them. The power of story-telling lies in its ability to convey a truth and Adichie’s stories are powerful indeed.”

We owe thanks to the literary translators. Huge thanks. Through meticulous and exacting work, carried out in obscurity and often in utter anonymity, these magicians of language open the door to whole new book stacks of wonder; they gift us with new ways of experiencing an expanded world, and new avenues of sharing the human experience.  Literary translators dismantle barriers of ignorance and allow us to enter at will into environments that are new in setting, landscape, and atmosphere, and yet familiar in the explored experiences of love, loyalty, duty, humor, deceit, betrayal, fear, despair, and resilience.

Can you imagine being taxed with translating James Joyce’s Ulysses into, say German or Mandarin? Or translating the fantastical situations of Gabriel Garcia Marquez from Spanish to Malayam?  Garcia Marquez is one of the most popular writers in Kerala – because of the translator who has brought his works there, making them comprehensible and keeping them beautiful.

Translators are the ultimate globalizers: through reading translated works I come to know new corners and spaces of the occupied planet, and out of my growing knowledge comes greater empathy, appreciation, and resonance.  My world becomes both larger, through expansion of my experiences, and smaller, through understanding my common and shared humanity. With borders broken down and empathy ignited, the potential for global unity grows.  Readers are indebted to translators for breaking down borders and creating these possibilities of global unity.

And what do writers owe their translators?  Gratitude, respect, and thanks.  My book Tolstoy and the Purple Chair is now available in a number of languages.  I am grateful to all the translators who worked on my book for bringing it to a larger and larger audience; I am full of respect for my wonderful translators, for taking the time to recreate my prose in a way that honors my purpose of understanding grief and sorrow and joy through books; and I offer my heartfelt thanks to all the translators, including Susan Ridder (Dutch translator), Paulo Polzonoff (Portuguese); Anke Caroline Burger and Susanne Hobel (German), Kim Byung-Hwa (Korean), and Eleonora Cadelli (Italian), for creating the multiple bridges that connect one writer to many readers, allowing for a global conversation about an universal experience.

I have heard from people from all corners of the world in the past months, and I am blown away by their praise. And I know I must share that praise with the translators who made the reading of my book possible.   Dank u! Obrigado! Vielen Dank! 감사합니다!  Molte Grazie!

And by the way, I love my name in Korean: Nina Sangkobichi.