A Memoir from John le Carré

The Pigeon Tunnel - Stories from my Life is a memoir of sorts composed of short chapter-length anecdotes from le Carré’s life that are amusing, head-shaking, chilling, or thought-provoking.  Several explain the origin of particular characters that appear in his books, and some describe hair-raising experiences during his trips to war zones and other exotic locations to research different novels.  For The Night Manager, he visits Panama to see a camp where the CIA trained the Special Forces from several countries, and to meet 54 year old President Endara, atop a Spanish colonial staircase, with his 22 year old mistress, newly turned wife: 

A young woman is crouched at his feet, her shapely rump pressed into designer jeans as she wrestles with a Lego palace she is building with the President’s children.
‘Darling,’ Endara cries down to her, in English for my benefit. ‘See who is here!  You have heard of….’ Et cetera.
Still kneeling, the First Lady looks me cursorily up and down and resumes her building.
‘But darling, of course you have heard of him!’ the President implores her. ‘You have read his wonderful books! We both have!’
Belatedly, the former diplomat in me stirs.
‘Madame President. There is no reason on earth why you should have heard of me. But you have surely heard of Sean Connery, the actor, who was in my recent film?’
Long silence.
‘You are friend of Mr. Connery?’
‘Indeed I am,’ I reply, though I scarcely know him.
‘You are welcome in Panama,’ she says.

 The Pigeon Tunnel is of special interest to le Carré fans, but full of striking stories and insights for any reader!

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On Immunity: an innoculation

This is an unusual and rewarding book.  Eula Biss is a freelance writer with interesting genetic credentials for authoring this book - that is, her father is a physician and her mother a poet.  The book embodies this heritage: it's both a very thorough analysis of the history, technique and value of immunization, together with an open-minded and very thoughtful critique of the balance between an individual's right to make choices regarding their own health and body, versus society's right to protect itself.  Biss is a very talented writer, whose prose is frequently powerful and memorable, sometimes humorous, and sometimes lyrical.  This is a very worthwhile read - highly recommended!

Choosing Hope

This book is a testament to the remarkable courage and goodness that is instinctive to people who are fundamentally good and caring. "Miss Roig" is a loving, supportive teacher who inspires trust, loyalty and love in her students.  She is committed to the idea that children must learn to care for one another, even before they begin to learn how to read and write.   And Miss Roig is the remarkable 1st grade teacher who saved the lives of 20 of her students.  Her classroom was the nearest to the front entrance and desk at the Sandy Hook Elementary School and, when she heard bursts of gunfire, had the presence of mind to turn off the lights, lock the door and rush her children into a very small bathroom at the back of their room.  Though terrified for her life, she had the composure to comfort the children and keep them quiet, without scaring them.  Feeling certain they were going to die, she wanted them to know, and told them, how much they were loved.  Later, when help arrived, they killed the attacker and began searching for survivors.  Miss Roig refused to open the door to these "police," telling them if they were who they said they were, they would be able to obtain a key to the room.  In the weeks and months after the attack, she worked to make changes in the school that would reassure her severely shaken students, and eventually founded groups that allowed her students to share with needy students across the nation. Though clearly selfless and caring, her efforts received publicity that induced envy and cynicism among some colleagues and administrators.  This is a heart-rending, yet inspiring story that illustrates how differences in character cause people to react to tragedy in very different ways.

The Invention of Wings

Very compelling historical fiction.  Sue Monk Kidd was startled to discover, at a theatrical performance celebrating the unsung contributions of women, that two sisters, Susan and Antonio Grimke, were towering figures in the history of both the anti-slavery and feminist movements and had grown up in Kidd's hometown of Charleston -  yet she had never heard of them.  Monk's research produced this powerful and lyrical story that brings to life the sisters - especially focusing on Susan, who believed she was being encouraged by her father, a very respected jurist, to pursue the law as a career and become the first female attorney and judge in Charleston - her spirit was nearly broken by the shattering of this dream when her father and respected brother told her in no uncertain terms that this was an ludicrously impossible and inappropriate dream.  Then, on her 11th birthday, following a tradition in the family, her mother "gave" her a slave, Hetty, called "Handful," as a birthday "present" - horrifying Susan, who wishes to set the girl free.  The Invention of Wings follows the separate lives of Susan and Handful and also their relationship, which is close but blighted by the injustice and horror of slavery.  This is both a very absorbing human story and an informative and powerful account of the impact of slavery. Thanks to CH for suggesting this book!  Highly-recommended.

Bookclub Plan 2017

In case anyone would like to read along!

BOOKCLUB PLAN 2017

DATE	BOOK 1	BOOK 2	HOST
“JAN”  (Sat 2/4 7PM)	Dead Wake by Erik Larson		Lauren
FEB  (Sat 2/25 7PM)	Kindred by Octavia Butler	Disposessed by Ursula K LeGuin	Terra/Nate
MAR  (Sat 3/25 7PM)	The Sum of Our Daysby Isabel Allende		Gavin
APR  (Sat 4/29 7PM)	Cordelia's Honor by Lois McMaster Bujold	On Basilisk Station by David Weber	Sarah
MAY  (Sat 5/27 7PM)	The Language of Foodby Dan Jurafsky	Babel 17 by Samuel R. Delany	Hayley
JUNE (Fri 6/16 7PM)	Childhood's End by Arthur C. Clarke		Ezra
JULY (Sat 7/29 7PM)	It Can't Happen Hereby Sinclair Lewis	The Crucible by Arthur Miller	Terra/Nate
AUG (Sat 8/26 7PM)	Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro	Franny and Zooey by J.D. Salinger	Colin
SEPT (Sat 9/30 7PM)	Little House on the Prairie by Laura Ingles Wilder	A Daughter of the Samurai by Etsu Inagaki Sugimoto	Sarah
OCT  (Sat 10/14? 6PM)	Dracula by Bram Stoker  (movie viewing!)	Endangered Pleasures by Barbara Bolland	Lauren
NOV (Sat 11/25 7PM)	The Secret History of Mongolian Queens by Jack Weatherford		Gavin
DEC (Sat 12/16 7PM)	Battle Royale by Koushun Takami		Hayley

Behind the Beautiful Forevers

This exceptional book by Katherine Boo reads like an absorbing, fascinating novel yet is, almost unbelievably, nonfiction.  Boo, a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter and writer for the New Yorker, lived in Mumbai and delved into the lives of the residents of Annawadi, a small slum beside a lake of sewage, adjacent to a very busy international airport serving Mumbai.

"Everything around us is roses" is how Abdul's younger brother, Mirchi, put it.  "And we're the shit in between."

In an afterward, Boo describes her research, interviewing and filming residents with the help of translators and student interns, for four years, then piecing together this extraordinarily vivid and clear-eyed account of key events in the life of Annawadi, including suicides, a murder, a tragic accident involving horses painted like zebras, and always the crushing power of poverty, inequality and pervasive corruption.

As Abdul and his family had already learned, the police station was not a place where victimhood was redressed and public safety held dear.  It was a hectic bazaar, like many other institutions in Mumbai, and investigating Kalu's death was not a profit generating enterprise."

Boo's aim is to understand how globalization and world economics shape the lives of those at the lower end of the economic scale and her insights are penetrating and empathetic.  This is a beautiful book, though heartbreakingly sad.

H is for Hawk

This extraordinary nonfiction book by Helen Macdonald creates its own genre: a very personal memoir of grief that focuses on the training of hawks and makes extensive reference and comparison to T.H. White, author of The Sword in the Stone, and a tortured, repressed man who also authored a book on his sad and difficult experiences in training a goshawk.

Macdonald is devastated when her father dies unexpectedly.  She had had a lifelong, deep interest in falcons and, out of this passion and as a distraction, she decides to acquire and train a goshark.

When you are broken, you run.  But you don't always run away.  Sometimes, helplessly, you run towards.

The goshawk was an unusual choice.  Macdonald explains and explores the idea that falconry has been the domain of the nobility, partly because large tracts of land - estates - are necessary for hunting, and the language and customs of falconry are precise and mannered.  Modern falconry is steeped in this aristocratic history, which for some, promotes a special kind of identity that tends to exclude outsiders.  Falconry was a passion and source of style in Nazi Germany.  But, unlike the noble falcons, the goshawk, Macdonald explains, is a low, murderous bird

They were things of death and difficulty: spooky pale-eyed psychopaths that lived and killed in woodland thickets.

Because it needs only short flights to run down its prey, a goshawk can be trained on small properties.  Hunting with goshawks is thus possible for commoners and is, basically, low class.

Compared to those aristocratic falconers, the austringer, the solitary trainer of goshawks and sparrowhawks, has had a pretty terrible press.  'Do not house your graceless austringers in the falconer's room', sniped the fourteenth-century Norman writer Gace de la Bigne. 'They are cursed in scripture, for they hate company and go alone about their sport.  When one sees an ill-formed man, with great big feet and long shapeless shanks, build like a trestle, hump-shouldered and skew-backed, and one wants to mock him, one says, "Look, what an austringer!"'

Macdonald herself is pretty feral and her grief over her father's death drives her to some outrageous and heart-rending behavior.  But her reflections are sharp and the descriptive writing is brilliant - fresh and vivid.  And though this is a dark book, it is laced with humor and, ultimately, is optimistic.  A terrific read.