The Great Divide, James, and Ship Fever: Reflecting on Historical Fiction

 I am not a huge fan of historical novels, for reasons having to do with the writing and the reading (or the aftermath of reading). I sense a lot of authors learn about an interesting event, do some research, and then write a book that informs people about the event while thinking that's enough to make a good novel--but, sadly, it's not. On the reader side--and maybe it's just me--I read a historical novel, realizing while reading that some parts of the book are accurate and some parts are fictionalized, but over time weave both the true and the fictional into my ideas about the past event. So basically all my historical "knowledge" is suspect. 

That's all an introduction to saying that somehow I just read three historical works of fiction  in a row; all were informative and well written--I liked them all though I didn't entirely love any of them (perhaps I am just fickle). The Great Divide, by Cristina Henriquez, focuses on the building of the Panama Canal and the effects of the massive effort on a range of people, from a teenage stowaway from Barbados who needs money to pay for an operation for her sister and has heard there are jobs in Panama to the researcher who has come to Panama to defeat malaria but instead loses his wife to the disease to the sisters who dedicate themselves to saving their village, whose destruction is threatened by the canal. Henriquez causes the reader to think about the impact of imperialism and "progress" at ground level, which is an achievement. However, I found there were too many characters and few were fully realized, so the book fell a bit flat as a novel.

James, by Percival Everett, is a reimagining of the character Jim from Mark Twain's classic Huckleberry Finn. In creating James, Everett explores the cruelty of slavery, particularly the treatment of so-called runaways. What I found most interesting was that he created a kind of reverse code switching, with enslaved people using standard English at home with their family and friends and the "patois" expected of them when addressing whites. I thought the book was well-done but it was too violent and too much of a "man on the run" plot for me to really enjoy it.

Finally, we come to Ship Fever, by Andrea Barrett, which is a National Book Award winner (1996)--had it not been part of my very slow project of reading award winners, I probably wouldn't have picked it up. It is a collection of short stories and the title novella, many of which feature characters who are scientists, some of which are strictly historical, others blending historical and contemporary stories. For example, in a story titled "The English Pupil," Linnaeus in old age is the protagonist; he is in terrible health, not entirely compos mentis; in a combination of thought and hallucination, he remembers his students, many of whom died on field expeditions he encouraged them to make. "The Behavior of the Hawkweeds," in contrast, is a contemporary story about a couple in an unhappy marriage, but it also includes history related to Gregor Mendel because the husband is a botany professor and the wife's grandfather actually knew Mendel (her husband loves to tell her grandfather's story to students and colleagues, but the wife thinks he does it badly and therefore keeps some secrets about the relationship from her husband). Perhaps the most notable piece is the title novella, which is the story of a young Canadian doctor who becomes involved in treating Irish immigrants who arrive in Canada suffering from typhoid. It's a grim story, but also informative and oddly touching. As with most collections of short fiction, I liked some of the pieces in this collection and didn't care for others. But I thought the novella "Ship Fever" was great. 

Heads of the Colored People, Real Americans, and Other Late Summer Favorites

Reading in late summer continued to be good, although I was sad that I didn't read any mysteries that I really loved. I thought I might rant a bit about the disappointment of books with terrible endings but decided no one needed to read that (plus I think I've gone on about this before). So here's some good stuff from the past 6 weeks or so.

Fiction

Real Americans is Rachel Khong's second novel and it's another sophomore success. The story is told from the perspectives of three generations of a Chinese American family. The first section, set around the turn of the 21st century, features Lily, the 20-something daughter of immigrant parents who are accomplished scientists. Lily isn't quite sure what her passion is--but she knows it's not science. Then she meets and marries the handsome, rich (and white) Matthew and they have a son; shortly after that big event, she discovers a link between their families that disturbs her greatly. From there we jump to 2021 and Lily's son Nick, who does not look at all Chinese but doesn't know his Anglo father and lives with his mother in an island near Seattle. He's an awkward teenager, who gets thrown for a loop when he learns who his dad is; their relationship ebbs and flows. The final section focuses on Mai, Lily's mother, both in her early life in China and in the present, when she meets Nick and tells him her story. Although the title suggests the book is about the immigrant experience--and it is--it's also about family relationships and secrets, life in Maoist China, teenage angst, and the impingement of science and its unscrupulous practitioners on human life--and I found all of it interesting. 

Send for Me, by Lauren Fox, was inspired by a box of letters from the author's great-grandmother that she discovered in her grandparents' belongings after their deaths. She collaborated with a German professor to translate the letters and then thought for 20 years about how to create a literary work based on the letters. The result is a moving account of a Jewish German family facing the increasing dangers of Germany in the 1930s. The younger generations--a daughter, her husband, and their baby--manage to escape, building a new life in Milwaukee. The parents remain behind, trying to get their papers in order to leave. Fox also jumps forward to the next generation, whose thoroughly American life is affected in ways she doesn't fully understand by her grandparents' and mother's experience as immigrants, not just fleeing evil but leaving family members behind amidst it. My description is definitely not doing the book justice--it's moving and insightful and I highly recommend it. 

Imagine being on a plane, heading home, going to a wedding, or working as a flight attendant. A woman gets up and walks down the aisle, telling each person--including a newborn--at what age and how they will die (the newborn will drown at age 7). Not long after the flight, passengers begin dying as she predicted, and the freakout begins. That is the premise of Liane Moriarty's latest, Here One Moment.  She advances the narrative with alternating chapters from the perspectives of the people dealing with the predictions and that of the woman making them. I've read a couple of other books with a similar premise but Moriarty pulls it together in a way that, oddly enough, makes you feel good about humanity.

A Woman Is No Man, by Palestinian American author Etaf Rum, is a disturbing read. I mention the author's ethnicity because if she were not of Palestinian heritage, I would have thought the book was stereotyping the culture. But because she is Palestinian, I must assume that her story of violent husbands and extreme restrictions on girls' life choices is based on the reality of at least some Palestinian Americans. The story involves three generations of women: Rafeeda, who saved money while living in a refugee camp so she and her husband could escape to the United States; Isra, a Palestinian girl whose family marries her off to Rafeeda's son when she is only 16; and Isra's daughter Deya, the oldest of her four daughters (she is shamed in her family for not giving birth to sons), all of whom are being raised by Rafeeda after Isra and Adam's deaths. Deya is a gifted high school student whose grandmother is seeking to arrange a marriage for her. The narrative moves around in time as the three women tell their stories, revealing family secrets and tragedies. Sad but powerful. 

Short Stories

As readers of this blog know, I am not generally a short story person. But I loved the darkly humorous pieces in Nafissa Thompson-Spires' Heads of the Colored People. Many stories relate specifically to the experiences of growing up and living as an African American, particularly a middle class African American. The protagonist of the title story, subtitled "Four Fancy Sketches, Two Chalk Outlines, and No Apology" is a young black man who does not conform to expectations--he has blond hair, wears blue contacts, and loves manga; on his way to ComicCon, he encounters a street artist and the police. "Belles Lettres" is an exchange of hostile letters between the highly educated mothers of the only two black students at a private school, funny yet sad, especially when one of the children emerges in subsequent stories bearing scars from her time at the school. Others to me, an older white woman, seemed to apply broadly. For example, "The Necessary Changes Have Been Made" details, with humor, the conflicts between faculty office mates at an HBCU. In one of my favorites, "Suicide Watch," Jilly considers suicide as a way to get more likes on social media--but can't decide what method would be most attractive. Favorite short story collection in a long time!

Nonfiction

Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder is Salman Rushdie's reckoning with the attempt on his life at a Chautauqua event in New York in August 2022. His memory of the actual attack is gripping, and his recover from the gruesome and extensive injuries he suffered is remarkable. Perhaps most interesting are his reflections on the meaning of violence, art, and life. The book is also a love story about his relationship with his wife, the writer and artist Rachel Eliza Griffiths. Her dedication and support were amazing, and the stress she endured was enormous (I must admit, however, that the love story did not resonate as much with me as it might have if she were not his fifth wife). I don't think I'm doing a good job of describing the book, but I think it's worth reading.

I didn't love Jamie Raskin's Unthinkable: Trauma, Truth, and the Trials of American Democracy. I found it somewhat repetitive and, to be honest, I had some trouble thinking about the family's grief after the death of Raskin's son (which is very movingly described) and January 6 simultaneously (although the Congressman was able to do so!). And perhaps I had already read enough January 6 books. However, it offered some explanations that were new to me and made it worth the read. First was Raskin's discussion of Trump's myriad violations of the Emoluments Clause; although I realized this was an issue, I now understand it in more detail. I also appreciated his brief discussion of why progressives should want to keep funding the police (albeit with improved recruitment and training) because right-wing terrorism is one of the most pressing public safety issues. Another small piece that I found very interesting was his account of being interviewed by Jake Tapper and finding the experience very rewarding because of the way Tapper posed questions that called on Raskin to think and to blend the personal and the political--evidently, feeling happy after an interview is an unusual experience. Perhaps the most surprising thing to me was that Raskin somehow believed it was possible all 100 Senators would vote for impeachment in the second impeachment trial--of course, he knew the case better than anyone, but come on . . . that was never going to happen.

Poetry

I love Nikki Giovanni and her 2020 book Make Me Rain: Poems & Prose did not disappoint. She celebrates African American culture and the joys of everyday life (she references quilts frequently). She also pillories racism, injustice, and Donald Trump (among other things). She also mentions transitioning so often in what I took to be a reference moving from one part of life to the next, including death, that I had to Google to make sure she's still alive (as of this writing, she is). And, best of all, her writing is deep but accessible--although I'm unsure what she means when she talks in several poems about going to Mars. Two samples:

Quiet (for Marvalene)

Quietly
you open a book
to let the sunshine in

Quiet
you hum a song
that you create
to let yourself relax

Quietly
you shed a tear
when you let a loved one
go to Heaven

Quiet
like bread rising
or your grandmother
sleeping.

Quietly
when you sew
a quilt to keep warm

Quiet
as the salt melts
in the bathwater

Quietly
Quietly
 Quietly

when you know
whatever else it is

you were loved. 

Excerpts from You Talk about Rape (for donald trump)

Give me left
overs
and I will create
a cuisine

Give me scraps
and I will create
a quilt

Give me life
and I will give us
all the moon
and the stars

Favorite Passages

Nothing was more fulfilling, it occurred to her, than giving back to others and letting people know about it.

     --Nafisi Thompson-Spires, Heads of the Colored People

In the presence of serious injuries, your body's privacy ceases to exist, you lose autonomy over your physical self, over the vessel in which you sail. You allow this because you have no alternative. . . . You allow people to do what they will with your body . . . so that you can live. 

I believe that art is a waking dream. And that imagination can bridge the gulf between dreams and reality and allow us to understand the real in new ways by seeing it through the lens of the unreal. 

Language, too, was a knife. It could cut open the world and reveal its meaning, its inner workings, its secrets, its truths. It could cut through from one reality to another. 

We created God to embody our moral instincts. 

    --Salman Rushdie, Knife