The Interpretation of Fairy Tales

Marie-Louise Von Franz

I've been a big fan of the works of Marie-Louise Von Franz ever since I read The Feminine in Fairy Tales. In The Interpretation of Fairy Tales, Von Franz does what she does best: she performs a Jungian interpretation of fairy tales. Von Franz deconstructs the tales by delving deepr and deepter into the significance of each character, object, and event. She compares and contrasts different versions of the same tale to offer a more expansive interpretation. Her discussion provides insights into human behavior and relationships. However, the last chapter on Shadow, Anima, and Animus can be a challenge to those without even a rudimentary familiarity with the works of Carl Jung. 

The Green Road

Anne Enright

Anne Enright’s The Green Road is about the Madigan family with Rosaleen, the mother, at its center.  The novel opens in 1980 with Rosaleen, her husband, and their four children at their home in Ardeevin, County Clare, Ireland. They are gathered around the table having a family meal when Dan, the eldest, announces his decision to become a priest. His mother greets the news by taking to her bed for several days—“the horizontal solution,” as her son, Dan, refers to it.

The novel follows the paths of the four siblings over a period of 25 years. Dan is in America struggling to come to terms with his homosexuality while experiencing the gay lifestyle in New York. His sister, Constance, is married with children, lives in the same town as her mother, and struggles to do the right thing and say the right thing to satisfy her mother. Emmet, the third child, is in Mali where he struggles to help a people plagued with disease, poverty, ignorance, and violence. Hanna, the youngest daughter, is a struggling actress, an alcoholic with a young baby. Their struggles are different but they all have in common their inability to forge meaningful connections with the significant others in their lives.

Enright captures the jealousies, resentments, petty squabbles, and rivalries of the four siblings, the seeds of which are apparent in their childhood and which continue to haunt them as adults. These tensions surface when they respond to a summons by their mother to gather for a reunion Christmas dinner in their childhood home. They walk through their childhood home where every nook and cranny, every fading piece of wallpaper, conjures up memories of a time long since past. We see the siblings talking at cross-purposes, misunderstanding each other, and raising past grievances.

At the center of the gathering is Rosaleen. Her children respond to her in different ways, but they all harbor a mixture of love and resentment toward her. She feels the same toward them—alternating between experiencing an overpowering love for them one minute and resentment the next. Enright’s gift lies in her ability to depict the inner life of her characters and to situate them in poignant, vivid scenes that tug at the heart. Her characters are fumbling in the dark, searching for meaning and connection.

The novel is about aging. It is about the things we leave behind and the baggage we carry with us as we journey through life. It is about realizing the bonds we formed in childhood with our siblings can be lost to us as adults. It is about recognizing one’s children may follow paths that lead them far from home in ways we can’t understand. And, finally, it is about fragile attempts to move forward and forge connections based on giving and receiving love.

A beautiful story told with unflinching honesty and sensitivity.

Our Souls at Night

Kent Haruf

In one sense, nothing much happens in Our Souls at Night by Kent Haruf. In another sense, everything that is of any importance in life happens.

It is the story of two elderly people in search of companionship and love. They find each other when Addie More invites her neighbor Louis Waters to share her bed at night so neither one of them has to sleep alone. Their conversations at night are honest, touching, and devoid of artifice as they reveal the intimate details of their private lives. Their friendship develops into a genuine love, the kind of love that can come to two people in their twilight years who understand they don’t have to play games or pretend to be something they’re not or care any more about what the nay-sayers and gossips might think. Their connection is forged on the premise that the elderly are entitled to companionship and to the sharing of life’s simple pleasures.

This is another of Kent Haruf's gems--quietly told, gentle, heart-warming, delicate, and beautiful in its simplicity.

The Year of the Runaways

Sunjeev Sahota

I have mixed feelings about The Year of the Runaways by Sunjeev Sahota. I found it bleak, depressing, with very little that could be considered uplifting.

The novel tells the story of a group of runaways from India who come from different backgrounds, castes, and socio-economic status and whose paths cross in Sheffield, England. The opening chapters thrust us into their squalid lives in Sheffield where they have come in search of employment. They struggle at working in a construction site; live in appalling, dehumanizing conditions; experience cruelty and exploitation; and are in constant fear of being captured and deported.  The characters are desperately poor. A portion of what little money they earn has to be sent home to support their families in India.

We are then taken back in time to reveal the tragic and violent circumstances that drove each to leave home, family, and country (in short, all that is familiar) to embark to an unfamiliar land in search of a better life.

As the story progresses, their situation deteriorates. They sleep on the streets and under bridges, eat whatever scraps they can find, compete for the same meager, low-paying jobs, and steal. It is all pretty bleak. Sahota narrates their horrific experiences in a very matter-of-fact, almost pedantic style. He peppers the writing with Punjabi and Sikh words or phrases that are unintelligible to a non-native speaker.

Having immersed his characters in squalid and desperate circumstances and just as they reach the point where the little they have begins to unravel, Sahota leaps ten years forward where the characters are now leading middle class lives with no explanation as to how they managed to do this.

This is not a "feel good" book. But in spite of some of its drawbacks, it is an important book since it increases our understanding and, hopefully, our compassion for the desperate plight some immigrants experience in their home countries and in their adopted ones. 

Florence Gordon

Brian Morton

Florence Gordon by Brian Morton is a delightful depiction of a seventy-five year-old feisty feminist who advanced the goals of the woman’s movement through her writing and political advocacy for decades and who remains politically active in spite of her advanced years. Florence is fiercely independent, brutally honest, selfish, tactless, eccentric, and a passionate advocate for justice and equity. 

Brian Morton manages to create a character that is complex, believable, and admirable in her own uncompromising way. His portrayal of this eccentric woman is all the more remarkable in that he was able to get inside a woman’s head and capture her personality so convincingly.  Florence is gutsy, values her space and privacy, and has little tolerance for anyone other than herself. Much to her chagrin, her family’s dramas weave in and out of her life, interrupting her work and routine. She remains fiercely determined to live and to die on her own terms.

The novel is situated in New York, an ideal setting for this rough and tough protagonist. The style is accessible. The story moves at a brisk pace. But the true strength of the novel lies in its character portrayals, beginning with Florence's aging feminist friends whom she has known for decades, her ex-husband, her son, her daughter-in-law, and her granddaughter. Like Florence, they may not be loveable characters, but they are recognizably real, However, it is Morton's portrayal of Florence Gordon herself that shines above all others and that makes the novel such an engaging and delightful read. Highly recommended.  

Lavinia

Ursula Le Guin

In her novel Lavinia, Ursula Le Guin takes the character of Lavinia who gets little more than a tertiary mention in Virgil’s Aeneid, and provides her with voice, character, and background. The novel is in the first person point of view with Lavinia speaking directly to the reader. She describes her childhood, upbringing, meeting with and subsequent marriage to Aeneas, the birth of their son, Aeneas’ death, and her son’s rise to power.

Lavinia is portrayed as a strong woman determined to fulfill her obligations as the daughter of a king, later as the wife of a king, and later still as the mother of a king. The love she feels for Aeneas and he for her seems genuine and touching. She converses with Virgil’s spirit, learning what the future holds in store for her and her progeny. She is curiously aware of her status as the poet’s creation and is not shy of telling the reader Virgil neglected some of the relevant details in her story and was mistaken in others.

Le Guin takes us to areas where Virgil never ventured. She expands on his vision by presenting the untold part of the story. Through her vivid and meticulous description of the rituals, ceremonies, and oracles, coupled with the daily routines of domestic life at the time, Le Guin creates a world that hovers on the borderline between myth and history. Her novel has a haunting quality that makes the mythic appear real. Her believable evocation of a different time and a different place, grounded as it appears to be in thorough research, is what I most enjoyed about the novel. That and the obvious fact she is such an incredible writer. 

Reading the OED: One Man, One Year, 21,730 Pages

Ammon Shea

Reading the OED: One Man, One Year, 21,730 Pages by Ammon Shea is an absolute delight. Shea describes his experience of spending a year reading the 20 volumes of the Oxford English Dictionary. He begins each chapter with a narrative of his experience and then selects about half a dozen words from each letter of the alphabet, defining and commenting on its meanings and usage. Some of the examples he provides are quirky; many are obscure; others are outright hilarious. Shea describes the OED as “the greatest story ever told.”

The pages of his foray into the OED are peppered with wit and sarcasm. His enthusiasm for the task is contagious, conveying genuine fleshment (the sense of excitement that comes from initial success) as he invites us to join him in conjubulation (being jubilant or rejoicing with another person). I encourage you to dispel your addubitation (suggestion of doubt) and delve into Shea’s Reading the OED. I assure you it will happify you immensely (to make happy).

The Lost Books of The Odyssey

Zachary Mason

The Lost Books of the Odyssey by Zachary Mason is a series of 44 short chapters, some of which are loosely based on Homer’s Odyssey, and some of which are creative re-imaginings, scenarios, and “what-ifs” that are so far removed from the Homeric poem they’re no longer recognizable as off-shoots from the original.

I approached the novel expecting a re-telling of the Odyssey, so I got slightly irritated every time Mason deviated substantially from the original. But to be fair to the author, his aim was not to re-tell. His aim was to take us down alternative, untrodden paths where, for example, we entertain the notion that Odysseus is a coward who hides behind a pseudo identity; where Helen is his spouse; where Penelope commits suicide; and where Scylla, Circe, Athena, and Greek and Trojan warriors are completely re-imagined. Reading the novel was almost like taking a romp through an alternative fantasy world where even the characters question what is “real” and what is fabrication.

If we accept the author’s premise that the stories are based on missing fragments of Homer's Odyssey, and if we are willing to abandon a desire for more faithful adherence to the original, then we will find much here that is commendable. The episodes are highly imaginative, creative, entertaining, well crafted, and well written.

Even though I prefer re-tellings of classical myths that adhere closer to the original, (check out my review of David Malouf's Ransom), I recognize The Lost Books of the Odyssey to be an extraordinary feat of the imagination and an entertaining, satisfying read. 

Homegoing

Ya'a Gyasi

Ya’a Gyasi’s Homegoing is an ambitious novel exploring the impact of slavery and colonialism on the people of Ghana and America’s northern and southern states. It does so through a series of vignettes focusing on two stepsisters and several generations of their descendents. The sisters never meet. One sister, Effia, marries a British slave trader; the other, Esi, is sold into slavery. The chapters alternate from a descendent of one sister to a descendent of the other until we get to the present day. The story spans about 250 years.

Thankfully, Gyasi includes a table to chart the descendents of each of the sisters to minimize the confusion caused by the shifting perspectives. We barely have time to get familiar with one character before we are thrust to the other side of the world and introduced to a new character or to a character we met earlier who is now decades older. There is little time for character portrayal and development. The effect of all this shifting in time and space and character gives the novel the feel of a series of jarring episodes. This is especially true in Part 2 which seems contrived and where one gets the sense the characters are not fully formed but are stereotypical mouthpieces.

Having said that, I still feel this is a remarkable achievement as a debut novel and well worth reading, primarily due to the strength of Part 1.

The Iliad: A New Translation by Caroline Alexander

Caroline Alexander

It has been a number of years since I last read The Iliad, preferring The Odyssey since it doesn’t have quite as much blood and gore or the constant litany of men killing and men being killed by arrows and spears and swords. I wasn’t sure I was up to reading about “darkness covering their eyes” or the sounds of clashing armor as men stumble to the ground. But learning of Caroline Alexander’s translation of The Iliad, I decided to tackle it again, especially since this is the first translation I know of done by a woman. I wasn’t disappointed.

Alexander does an impressive job. I have read translations of The Iliad by Richmond Lattimore, Robert Fitzgerald, and Robert Fagles. My favorite has always been the Lattimore translation, but I would put Alexander’s translation right up there with the best of them. I found her language to be more accessible and lucid than previous translations. Her lines have a certain rhythmic quality which I can only assume is similar to the Greek. And although I don’t speak Greek, I appreciate her line-by-line translation, retaining the same number of lines as in Homer. This will make it easier for Greek speakers to do a line-by-line comparison.

I won’t deny I find it particularly commendable that Alexander’s translation shatters yet another glass ceiling. But it bears repeating that her translation of The Iliad is a mammoth achievement that stands on its own merit. I strongly recommend it. 

Beauty is a Wound

Eka Kurniawan

“One afternoon on a weekend in March, Dewi Ayu rose from her grave after being dead for twenty-one years.” So begins Eka Kurniawan’s epic novel, Beauty is a Wound. With that startling opening sentence, we are hurled from one fantastical situation to another. In this topsy-turvy world where violence and rape abound, a legendary beauty marries a dog, a pig turns into a human, a woman wears an iron chastity belt to prevent her husband from raping her, and ghosts interact with humans and with each other on a regular basis. It’s as if we ventured with Alice down the rabbit hole where the bizarre becomes plausible. All of these fantastic events take place against a backdrop of the recent history of Indonesia with its struggle for independence, guerrilla warfare, bloodshed, and massacres.

The novel recounts the story of the Dewi Ayu, the most beautiful, sophisticated prostitute in the village of Halimunda. The story of Dewi and her four daughters intertwines with cultural folklore to such a degree that the lines separating them blur with the latter bleeding seamlessly into the narrative of Dewi Ayu and one or another of her daughters.

Kurniawan has written a brilliant tale, one that is simultaneously imaginative, compelling, funny, tragic, and an absolute delight to read. Highly recommended. 

The Professor and the Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity, and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary

Simon Winchester

The Professor and the Madman by Simon Winchester chronicles the origins and development of the Oxford English Dictionary. One would assume the history of a dictionary—even one as illustrious as the OED—would be dry. But thanks to the colorful character of William Chester Minor and the skillful treatment of Simon Winchester, the tale was riveting.

Minor, an American suffering from mental illness that led him to commit a murder, was incarcerated for most of his life in an asylum in England for the criminally insane. He was a brilliant intellectual with a lot of time on his hands.

When Dr. James Murray, the editor of the OED, put out a call for volunteers to assist in compiling definitions for the dictionary, Minor answered the call with unparalleled commitment and fervor. He worked systematically and industriously on the project for years. His contributions (over 10,000 definitions) to the creation of the OED were critical, earning him the respect and friendship of Dr. Murray.

Winchester is a master story-teller. His writing is engaging, informative, and peppered with a great sense of humor. He tells us in the opening pages of Minor’s prodigious contribution to the OED and of his residency in the insane asylum, a fact unknown to the sedate James Murray until they finally meet after 20 years of working together. Winchester builds up the suspense so we are anxious for the meeting to take place. Weaving in and out of their stories is a description of the painstaking and time-consuming work that went into the creation of the OED, a 20-volume project that was 70 years in the making.

Winchester takes what could have been a boring subject if executed by less skilled hands and turns it into an entertaining, informative, and fascinating story of the compilation of an epic achievement in the English language and of the two individuals instrumental in its creation. 

Honor

Elif Shafak 

Honor by Elif Shafak is the story of three generations of a Kurdish family told from multiple first person points of view. Shifting backward and forward in time, the narrative weaves together its different threads. The novel reads much like a puzzle that has to be pieced together to arrive at a complete picture. By giving us access to the thoughts of each of the characters, Shafak helps us to understand the motivation for their actions. This includes Iskender who commits a murder having convinced himself it is the only way to preserve his family’s honor. We may not like his character, but we understand why he felt driven to do it.

Shafak explores the role of cultural values in our lives and how they can sometimes be constructive and other times destructive. The novel is about the impact of cultural baggage that is so imbued in us, we wear it like a second skin, unable to shake it off even if we are in a foreign land miles away from our place of origin.

The novel has a wide scope, taking the reader from a Kurdish village on the border of Turkey and Syria, to the streets of London and Abu Dhabi. It covers a broad spectrum of themes: the immigrant experience, racism, domestic abuse, parental love—or lack thereof, loveless marriages, oppressive gender roles, and the positive and negative legacies we inherit from our culture and our family.

I enjoyed certain aspects of the novel but at times felt it was somewhat contrived--as if the characters served as mouthpieces for ideas. I felt this was especially true of Zeeshon who seems to be inserted in the novel for the sole purpose of precipitating Iskender's ostensible redemption.

Traveling With Pomegranates: A Mother and Daughter Journey to the Sacred Places of Greece, Turkey, and France

Sue Monk Kidd and Ann Kidd Taylor

Sue Monk Kidd and Ann Kidd Taylor’s Traveling with Pomegranates chronicles the travels of mother and daughter as they visit archaeological sites, museums, and sacred places in Greece, Turkey, and France. The chapters alternate between mother and daughter with each one trying to cope with her own existential crisis—the mother because she is turning fifty, the daughter because she was rejected from the graduate school of her choice. During their travels, they redefine themselves and form a close bond. This is all very interesting, but. . .

They were traveling in Europe, seeing the most amazing sights that many of us will never have the opportunity to visit, and yet they spent most of their time indulging in self-recrimination and self-absorbed navel gazing. Instead of appreciating that they have the time, the financial support, and the family support to travel as much as they do, they wallow in self- pity and engage in self-analysis and analysis of each other.

I was looking forward to reading this book because I love mythology and the ancient sites associated with myths. I enjoyed the sections where mother and daughter actually described the sights they visited. But these were too few and too far between. For the most part, they used the sights as platforms to veer back to their very privileged selves and whine about their angst. Disappointing, to say the least. 

Evantide

Kent Haruf

Just as with Plainsong, the language of Evantide by Kent Haruf, the second book in his trilogy, evokes a simpler time in life when people spoke plainly, when a community rallied to support those dealing with life’s losses and tragedies, when people genuinely seemed to care for each other by showing their kindness and generosity in very tangible ways. We meet new faces here along with some already familiar to readers of Plainsong. The McPheron brothers are as endearing as ever. As was true of Plainsong, Haruf performs an amazing feat of capturing the uniqueness of his characters through their actions and through dialog stripped to bare minimum with short sentences and few words.

Evantide wasn't as uplifting as Plainsong. Its characters struggle with poverty, violence, abuse, tragedy, loss, and loneliness. But peppered throughout is evidence of people’s kindness, generosity, simplicity, and compassion, all of which are lovingly and beautifully rendered against the backdrop of a rural, rugged town in Colorado. 

A Spool of Blue Thread

Anne Tyler

To paraphrase the opening line of Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina, all families are quirky; each family is unique in its quirkiness. This is what came to mind as I read Anne Tyler’s A Spool of Blue Thread. Just as a spool of thread slowly unravels, Anne Tyler’s novel slowly unwinds to reveal the lives of four generations of the Whitshank family. It is the very quirkiness of this family that makes them unique and yet so recognizable and engaging.

In a quiet, slow-moving family drama, Tyler realistically portrays her characters with all their eccentricities, petty squabbles, sibling rivalries, and secrets. Hovering in the background is the house they live in, rendered with such loving detail and given so much importance that it seems to emerge as another character in the novel.

The first half of the novel is stronger than the second half, and the ending was disappointing since there was no sense of closure. This is not a fast-paced novel in which the reader races from one exploding event to another. It is a novel about people. And when it comes to writing novels with realistic characters that seem to step off the page, Anne Tyler is mistress of the craft. 

Classical Literature: An Epic Journey From Homer to Virgil and Beyond

Richard Jenkyns

In Classical Literature: An Epic Journey from Homer to Virgil and Beyond, Richard Jenkyns displays his extensive knowledge of the classics. He surveys 1,000 years of classical Greek and Roman literature. Jenkyns brings the greatest thinkers of classical literature to life through lively, engaging, and informed discussions of their work. He sprints from one figure to the next, evaluating their work, expressing his opinions, challenging outworn interpretations while simultaneously dropping gems of insight. He discusses the plays of the great tragedian Aeschylus in new and thought-provoking ways. His sentences can take unexpected turns. His views can be somewhat unorthodox as when, for example, he describes Sophocles’ Ajax as leaving us “in a state of appalled wonderment.” Or when he says of the Romans that their original achievement was to “invent imitation."

Throughout the work, Jenkyns peppers his analysis oughout the work, Jenkyns peppers his analysis with humor and tongue-in-cheek irony, which makes for a thoroughly engaging and informative read. The breadth and scope of his knowledge is impressive. This book is highly recommended for those with an interest in Greek and Roman literature.

Plainsong

Kent Haruf 

Kent Haruf’s Plainsong is a quiet, subtle, and beautifully written novel about a fictional rural town in Colorado. Everything about it is understated. Haruf portrays a diverse range of heart-warming characters vividly, with elegance, simplicity, and compassion. We come to know these characters even though we are never made privy to their thoughts. The novel has no internal monologues. What dialogue exists between characters is sparse. Haruf reveals his characters through their actions and the few words they say to each other. The reader is drawn in and finds himself/herself invested in their struggles as they cope with the challenges life has thrown in their direction.

It is a beautiful story told with clarity, elegance, and above all, simplicity. We gradually come to know and love the gentle, unassuming characters. Their quiet generosity and the support they give one another in times of crisis is heart-warming and restores one’s faith in the goodness of people. 

The Jungle

Upton Sinclair

Written in 1906, Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle follows the plight of Jurgis Rudkus, a Lithuanian immigrant and his family, as they struggle to make a living in Chicago. Jurgis finds work at a meatpacking company, allowing Sinclair to expose the unsanitary and inhumane working conditions of the industry. Speaking very little English, Jurgis and his family become victims of con artists, corporate greed, political corruption, violence, harassment, and exploitation. They reel from one catastrophe to another, from one tragedy to another. We witness their physical and moral decline as the novel progresses. Sinclair’s description of the horrific working conditions and grossly contaminated meat sold to unsuspecting consumers caused a huge public outcry. This led the government to implement much needed reforms, one of which was passage of the Meat Inspection Act.

Sinclair performed a valuable service in exposing the horrors of the meat packing industry at the turn of the century. However, at times his novel reads more like a political treatise than a work of fiction. He hammers home his political agenda so heavily that the novel borders on becoming tiresome. But possibly this heavy-handed intrusion of political, economic, and social injustices was necessary at the time to get the public’s attention

The Lowland

Jhumpa Lahiri

Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Lowland depicts the lives of an Indian family told against the backdrop of a politically turbulent period in India. It focuses on two brothers who come of age in the 1950s. Their paths diverge when one of them moves to America while the other becomes progressively more embroiled in revolutionary activities in India. Lahiri’s skill in storytelling lies in weaving her narrative in such a way as to transcend the specificity of a particular family. Her characters experience the fragility and vicissitudes of life in all its challenges of violence, betrayal, love, grief, honor, and loss.

Through her poignant and beautifully told story of the Mitra family, Lahiri reminds us of some of life’s universal truths: we can never be fully removed from the historical and cultural climate which gave birth to us; the choices we make in life, even if they are made with the best of intentions, can have devastating consequences; aging consists of the slow, irreversible process of letting go; and life frequently presents us with challenges we may never fully comprehend.