Miriam Gone Home: The Life of Sister Huggin

#353
Title: Miriam Gone Home: The Life of Sister Huggins
Author: Miriam H. Huggins
Year: 2006
Publisher: AuthorHouse
Country: Saint Kitts and Nevis
262 pages 

Saint Kitts and Nevis.

This is a hard book to review. On the one hand, I appreciated the look inside the mind of this very religious author. On the other hand, I didn't like what I saw there. Huggins is judgmental, strict about doctrine (when it suits her to criticize others) and, apparently, constantly besieged by vicious congregants, witchcraft-wielding neighbors, and devils. I have no doubt that this is how she experienced her life as an abused and neglected child on Nevis and later as a lay minister (or minster's wife). I do doubt that I would have interpreted events the same way if I were observing her. By the time she got to her enthusiasm for converting the Jews I had to make myself keep reading, and though I was sorry that she died of cancer, I would have sent her family my condolences from a distance. Her memoir does provide a great deal of indirect information about synchretic Christianity and the difficulty of ministering when other religious beliefs and traditions are covertly practiced or integrated into the community's (and minister's) culture.

I doubt that witchcraft exists, but I am willing to suspend my disbelief because I have no call to argue with the author about the nature of reality. Mostly, though, this memoir strikes me as a life narrative by a depressive, somewhat paranoid, and perhaps abrasive person who somatizes and externalizes her stress in the form of vague physical symptoms that she attributes to maliciousness and the devil. That some of her children also confirm and experience these phenomena convinces me only that there are cultural and perhaps psychological factors at play. In the end, I am glad her faith sustained her, but her story makes me sad.

The White Tiger

#352
Title: The White Tiger
Author: Aravind Adiga
Translator: John Buchanan-Brown
Year: 2008
Publisher: Free Press
304 pages

Read as an audiobook with an excellent reader.
Well-narrated, quick, wry and entertaining, though not without its moral dilemmas, which include self-centeredness, classism and stereotyping perpetuated even by those who see themselves as enlightened or different, disloyalty, murder, and the question of whether living in "the darkness" and a corrupt social surround explain, justify, or let one off the hook for one's actions. I'd have rated it higher if the narrator made a better acknowledgment of the effects of his actions on his family. This seems to be an authorial omission, since the shape of the narrative cries out for it.

Read with Michelle Cliff's No Telephone to Heaven for more on post-colonial iniquity,inequity, and rage.

Daba's Travels from Ouadda to Bangui

#351
Title: Daba's Travels from Ouadda to Bangui
Author: [Makombo] Bamboté
Translator: John Buchanan-Brown
Illustrator: George Ford
Year: 1970
Publisher: Pantheon
Country: Central African Republic
174 pages 

This middle readers novel about a boy in the Central African Republic is a somewhat diluted bildungsroman, most interesting for its descriptions of the boy's daily life. While the village scenes are illuminating, the fluid and dynamic illustrations are its most charming and noteworthy element.

The Magicians

#350
Title: The Magicians
Author: Lev Grossman
Year: 2009
Publisher: William Heinemann
406 pages 

Better as an idea than in the execution. Grossman uses a fantasy frame and tropes to tell a story of youth alienation. Unfortunately, Grossman seems more contemptuous than admiring of the genre. The jokes (many Harry Potter and Narnia-based) quickly become brittle, then stale. It's too bad, because the possibilities are excellent, and Grossman's inclusion of Jewish imagery brings a fresh perspective to the genre (imagine Harry Potter thinking a magical text looks like the Talmud). The story itself is simply not able to deliver on its compelling premise, degenerating into a jumbled, boring blur of drinking and immaturity. The characters remain flat and grow unlikeable over time. Plot points amble and some are ultimately dropped, perhaps out of an authorial ennui that parallels that of his world-weary 20-something characters. The ending is pat, disappointing, and unearned.

The Time Traveler's Wife

#349
Title: The Time Traveler's Wife
Author: Audrey Niffenegger
Year: 2003
Publisher: Harcourt
556 pages

Audiobook here.

As with all time travel narratives, the structure was an important element, here executed well. The resolutions of  plot points were managed relatively tidily. The middle of the book moved slowly, though it could be argued that it was necessary both for establishing a domestic interval and for developing the theme that love doesn't solve all of the problems experienced by Odysseus afloat on the sea of time.

I did not enjoy the audiobook, which I interspersed with the physical book. The Henry reader sounded jaded, bored, and Humbert Humbert-like.

Typhoid Mary

#348
Title: Typhoid Mary
Author: Anthony Bourdain
Year: 2001/2005
Publisher: Bloomsbury
156 pages

Bourdain's breezy essay on Mary Mallon is less factual than speculative, more of a pensée focused on cooks' employment and circumstances than a biography or social  history. Some of his assertions are a stretch, and others are factually incorrect. It could have used a good edit for accurate content and consistent style. For maximum effect, read with Susan Sontag's Illness as Metaphor and Gina Kolata's Flu: The Story of the Great Influenza Pandemic of 1918 and the Search for the Virus That Caused It.

Blue Bay Palace

#347
Title: Blue Bay Palace
Author: Nathacha Appanah
Translator: Alexandra Stanton
Year: 2004/2009
Publisher: Aflame Books
Country: Mauritius
106 pages

What I liked best about this novel were the descriptions of Mauritius and the articulation of the relationships between rich and poor. As a novel, it's not as interesting as it could be because it relies on the "then I went crazy" plot device. The descriptions of the beaches and towns are eloquent, but the emotional content is less well-rendered. As in so many accounts of thwarted love, both actual and fictional, the protagonist can't muster up the wherewithal to kill her estranged beloved, but instead destroys the object of her beloved's affections or marriage. This "kill the other woman" strategy always puzzles me, especially in situations where the other woman had no choice but to marry the man.