I should begin this review by disclosing that the author, Nancy Milford, is a family friend. It is because I know her personally that I first picked up this book but Nancy is a Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award finalist and a best-selling biographer so there is plenty of reasons to read her writing. Nancy’s most famous biography is probably “Zelda” about Zelda Fitzgerald, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s troubled wife but it was her biography of Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892-1950) that most attracted me at the bookstore. Edna St. Vincent Millay, known to her friends as Vincent, was a Pulitzer prize winning poet whose poetry and lifestyle became a symbol of the jazz age. She began writing at a very early age and impressed much older critics and authors with a maturity of writing that no one expected from a teenage girl. Both as a result of her early start and her youthful look even as middle-aged woman, she became known as the girl poet and for much of her career impressed a mostly male critics circle with her femininity as much as her talent. Millay’s talent, beauty and charm made her one of the most sought after women of her time and though she did eventually marry it was an open marriage that allowed Millay the freedom to continue to have affairs with both men and women for much of her life. Milford does a superb job of describing Millay’s life and personality in the context of her extraordinary talent, her gender and the age in which she lived. This was one of the best biographies I’ve read in a long time both because it introduced me to the life of an incredible woman and artist and because it was well-written, thoroughly researched and perfectly distilled by Milford.
Link to the book here: http://www.amazon.com/Savage-Beauty-Life-Vincent-Millay/dp/039457589X
I always like to read but I’m sure I’m not alone in that I read a bit less during the summer months when the weather is beautiful and I’m more likely to spend time outdoors. Still, I have been reading so I owe you some reviews, which I will try to catch-up on in the next couple of days.
Three Cups of Tea has become incredibly famous and widely-read so I won’t bother with too much background. It’s a book about one man’s (Greg Mortenson) efforts to build schools throughout rural Pakistan and eventually Afghanistan. Mortenson was an avid mountain climber, which is how he ended up in rural Pakistan in the first place (trying to climb K2) so the book is packed with references to climbers and the climber lifestyle. This is obviously a timely book that is well-written with a lot of powerful images of the poverty and lifestyle of Pakistan’s rural mountain people. It’s also entertaining and enlightening but it is obviously by no means an impartial look at Mortenson’s work and his Central Asia Institute (CAI). It’s basically a promotional pamphlet for CAI turned into a book and it should be read as such.
Joyce Carol Oates is one of most prolific authors of our time. At my last count she has written over 38 novels, 11 novellas, 34 collections of short stories and many other novels under various pseudonyms she uses. I have read many of her novels, have heard her speak and think she is one of the greatest writers of her generation (she disagrees, BTW). But it has been a little while since I last picked up one of her books so when I saw The Falls at my local bookstore I had the urge to dive back into the Oates library.
Strawberry Fields is the second novel for Lewycka, whose very successful debut novel, A Short History of Ukranian Tractors was nominated for a Booker Prize and generated a lot of favorable buzz when it was first published. So naturally when I arrived at the house we rented for Memorial Day weekend and found Strawberry Fields, I knew I would have to make it my mission to read it over the long weekend. Despite serious competition for my attention, including several beer pong games, 9 mile hikes and barbeques, I was able to finish Strawberry Fields and can actually remember enough of it to write this review. I liked this book- it has the charming immigrant who speaks imperfect English meets the West angle which if done well can be hilarious. As an added bonus, there is a message there, though, not subtle,about the downside of globalization. The main characters are migrant workers who come to the UK to pick strawberries from various former Eastern-block countries and end up travelling through the UK through a series of Chaucerian adventures that all go to demonstrate how much it sucks to be part of the shadow economy of a westernized democracy. I liked this a lot- I don’t think it was too preachy or depressing but it certainly got the message across.
I wanted to like this book and its author, Giulia Melucci, because she was self aware enough to write this book and to honestly reflect on her failed relationships but I had a hard time. This book is Melucci’s story of her adult dating life from approximately aged 22 to 40 with recipes she cooked during relationships and at transformational moments sprinkled throughout. Truthfully, the recipes (almost all of which looked so good I stopped dog earring pages because I realized I was marking every page) were the best part of this book. It was difficult to read through Melucci’s failed lover affairs precisely because she is self-aware enough to chronicle all of her doubts and hesitations, almost all of which surfaced almost immediately into relationships, some of which she ended up carrying on for years. She is someone who clearly wants love and a family but who gets in her own way so much through the choices she makes and the way she approaches dating that it is hearbreaking and because she knows precisely what she’s doing, it is difficult reading. But since this book probably has more recipes that I’d love to make than most of my cookbooks, I recommend it and think it is actually worth owning.
Gail Tsukiyama is actually a fairly prolific author, whose novels frequently involve Japanese characters and focus on Japanese culture and traditions. This was my first exposure to her work and I was not disappointed. In Street of A Thousand Blossoms Tsukiyama explores two ancient Japanese traditions, sumo wrestling and mask making. The novel spans twenty odd years and takes place before, during and after World War II with two orphaned brothers who are being raised by their grandparents, Hiroshi and Kenji, as the main characters. At its heart, this novel is about Hiroshi and Kenji but woven throughout stories of their everyday lives are details of Japanese history, food, sport and culture that enrich the novel without rendering it dry and making it appear self-indulgent on the part of Tsukiyama. If you are already a connoisseur of Japanese culture, I think you will still appreciate Tsukiyama’s excellent prose and attention to detail. I enjoyed this book and it has opened up a whole world of Tsukiyama’s work for me, which I expect to be exploring in the future.
The Inheritance of Loss took Desai 7 years to write and it is obvious that she thought through every word used. Desai’s imagery of Kalimpong, an Indian town in the Himalayas and its inhabitants is at times so vivid as to evoke a physical reaction. She describes the poverty and dilapidated grandeur of both her characters and their surroundings with the ease and imagery of Rushdie or Naipaul and was similarly rewarded with the Man Booker Prize for this novel in 2006. At its heart, The Inheritance of Loss is the story of post-colonial India and its lingering confusion over its relationship with its British colonizers and their symbols of western culture (think Marks & Spencer, tea, jam, the queen, mutton, mint jelly, etc.) The main characters Sai, the judge and the cook live in a run down estate at the base of the Himalayas and, at the judge’s insistence, attempt to carve out a “civilized” life for themselves amid the poverty and desperation of the region. Juxtaposed with their story is that of Biju, the cook’s son who is struggling to survive in the illegal immigrant shadow economy in New York. This book took me a little while to read because nothing much happens in it but I enjoyed reading it slowly and savoring Desai’s descriptions which unwind slowly to present a larger mosaic of lives and places that are bound together by poverty and colonialism, even as they struggle to escape. 
British writer Peter Mayle’s books chronicling his relocation to and life in Provence, France have become one of the most widely read travel books around. A Year in Provence (1991) is about Mayle’s first year living in Provence with his wife and their quest to restore an 18th century farmhouse at the base of the Luberon mountains. I read somewhere that when it was first published, the publisher agreed to print 3,000 copies and promised to give Mayle a discount to buy them to give as Christmas gifts. The first printing sold out within a few weeks and this book as well as his subsequent chronicles of Provencal life have now sold several million copies worldwide. No matter how many books are written on the topic and how trite the idea becomes of relocating to an idyllic southern European country with a slower paced lifestyle and fresh local food, this type of travel book will always find an audience because we’ve all bought into the myth (or at least those of us in big cities glued to our laptops). We use to have the American Dream- we now have the Provencal or Tuscan dream. But I digress. This book is good not just because it sells an idea whose time has come but because the story is told with just the right amount of that wry wit Brit writers are able to convey with facility. Mayle manages to poke fun at French culture and stodgy traditions while good naturedly maintaining a clear veneer of admiration for his subject. His books are immensely entertaining and even more so if you’re a fan of French food (truffles, tarts, wine and various innards make several appearances). I have read all of his books on Provence (Toujours Provence, Encore Provence and Provence A to Z) and have enjoyed all of them mostly because Mayle is a great writer who manages to hold your attention and capture your imagination even while he tells you how much better his life is than yours.
People of the Book (2008) is the story of the Sarajevo Haggadah (Jewish prayer book for Passover) and its 500 year history in Southern Europe. Conveniently, the narrator is an Australian antique book expert who has been asked to evaluate and restore the haggadah. Each clue to the origins of the haggadah she finds leads to a new chapter in which the reader learns an additional piece of the haggadah’s history. We start in 1996 in post-war Bosnia, pass through World War II, pre-war Austria, the Spanish Inquisition and end up with a Moor in Seville in 1480. The book is clearly fiction but the Sarajevo Haggadah does exist and some of the details Brooks uses to craft the story are real. People of the Book was actually another book club selection and while I enjoyed it, it’s not one of those books that made me think or feel any differently. I like that Brooks stays away from historical themes that could be trite and really focuses on her characters and their lives rather than on the bigger events surrounding them. I recommend this book if the topic is right up your alley but I would not be heartbroken if you didn’t jump up to buy it this second.