Category Archives: Feminism

June 27, 2025 · 12:01 am

The Ghost Woods by C.J. Cooke

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Oh God, there it is, lit up by the car’s headlights. Four pointy turrets and dark stone walls laced with red ivy. It looks like Dracula’s holiday home.

Something unspeakably evil is stalking the grounds of Lichen Hall.

Two women, from different backgrounds, at different times, (1959 and 1965) find themselves in the same position, pregnant without a mate in a period in which that was not considered socially acceptable. Such women were often shunted off to mother-and-baby homes. You may have heard of the Madgalene laundries of Ireland. They were awful, and were not restricted to the Emerald Isle. But Mrs. Whitlock’s Lichen House is soooooo much worse. There is plenty of strangeness about the place and some of its inhabitants, well beyond garden-variety human unpleasantness.

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C.J. Cooke – image from Curtis Brown

In 1959, seventeen-year-old Mabel Anne Haggith finds herself five months deep in a family way, despite never having had sex. Her mother and stepfather have sent her off to be seen to, out of sight of the neighbors. She is truly a clueless innocent. She feels that there are ghosts in her body. In 1965 Pearl Gotham, twenty-two, a nurse, is likewise facing emerging problems, an unreliable bf among them. Both are taken in by the welcoming, if somewhat chilly, Mrs. Whitlock. The house seems likelier to generate nightmares than comfort to women in need. In fact, it has much in common with the abusive mother-and-baby institutions of its time. More about that later.

Mabel is very much a pleaser, eager to fit in, even when hazed by those already there. She is shy and unsure of herself, working class, uneducated, and for all intents and purposed alone in the world. Until she finds a friend in another young woman there, Morven.

Pearl arrives with much more confidence. A nurse, she is aware of the seriousness of the lack of real medical care at Lichen House. She is also much more worldly, more socially able, not just with the other young women but with Mrs. Whitlock as well. In addition she is charged with tutoring Mrs. Whitlock’s decidedly odd grandson.

Cooke offers a cornucopia of detail that gives the creepiness texture and provides a constant source of surprising revelations. There are mysteries to be sussed out. The overarching imagery of the story has to do with fungi. The house itself is seriously infested with molds of various sorts, and is rapidly sinking into decrepitude.

I follow her gaze to an enormous mass of yellow fungus creeping up the side of a wall. What looks like a series of giant ears are bulging from the gap in the doorframe, right down to the floor. As I draw my eye across the length of the vestibule I spot more fungus spewing from cracks in the tiles and the window frames. The vaulted ceiling is sullied by black blooms of mold. Black frills poke out from the wooden steps at my feet. And at the end of the staircase, a plume of honey-gold mushrooms nub out from the newel post, perfectly formed. It makes me feel physically ill.
“What happened?” I ask, burying my mouth in the crook of my arm.
She sighs wearily. “An infestation of fungus. I still can’t quite believe it. This house has been standing for four hundred years. It has withstood bombs, floods, and a bolt of lightning.” She folds her arms, exasperated. “Fungus can eat through rock, can you believe that?”
“Good God,” I say.

The woods manifest spots of light that can lure one in. Mrs. Whitlock celebrates every birth with a puff of fairy dust toward the newbie. Mr. Whitlock maintains a Micrarium, a sort of mini- museum, a cabinet of curiosities focused on fungi. He makes a big deal about cordyceps, which may be familiar to fans of The Last of Us.

There is plenty of strangeness. Who posts a “Help Me” poster in one of the rooms? Who is that little boy Pearl sees dashing about, the one the other young women deny having seen? Mrs. Whitlock seems particularly averse to making use of the medical profession, forcing her guests to give birth in the house, with only the assistance of the women living there. What’s up with that? Mr. And Mrs. Whitlock were reputed to have had a son who died in an auto accident, but his body was never recovered. Huh? Who is the mysterious, threatening figure in the woods?

“So there’s a story about a witch who lives in the ghost woods out in the forest.”
“I’ve heard of that,” I say. “Mrs. Whitlock mentioned it. At least, the ghost woods part. I don’t believe she mentioned a witch.”
“Well, I heard about it when I first came here,” Rahmi says, and I see Aretta give her a look, as though to warn her not to say more. Rahmi notices, and bites back whatever she was going to say. “I’ve seen her,” she says guardedly.
“Who, the witch?” I say, and she nods. I study her face, expecting her to say “Boo!” or something, revealing it all as a big joke.
“Well, then,” I say, raising my glass of water as though it is a crisp Chardonnay. “I shall seek out this witch in the ghost woods. A little bit of spookiness will spice this place up nicely.”
“Don’t,” Rahmi says, though I’m not sure how much I should take this at face value. “It might be the last thing you ever do.”

As the story goes, Nicnevin was a witch who had lain with a girl who had fallen asleep in the woods. When the girl gave birth, it was to a monstrosity, and it was killed. Nicnevin made the family mad before killing them, then took over the family hall to be a place of rot and ruin, naming it Lichen Hall.

In addition to the ample gothicness of the novel, there is plenty of character and plot content to keep you flipping those pages, and maybe loading up on bleach. Both Mabel and Pearl are sympathetic. What will happen with them, with their babies? What kind of danger are they in? You will definitely care.

There is also plenty of payload beneath the overlaid story. In an image of how women were treated in the 50s and 60s, the awfulness of Mrs. Whitlock’s Lichen House offers a vibrant image of a decaying institution, controlled by ill-meaning people, enforcing wrong-headed social norms, and crushing any people or behaviors falling outside the prescribed lanes. It is a moving, powerful, effective tale.

The Ghost Woods is, first and foremost, a gothic novel, the last installment of a thematic trio that considers our relationship with nature, motherhood, memory, and trauma (the previous two installments are The Nesting and The Lighthouse Witches). I suppose the question could legitimately be asked whether motherhood, gay rights, reproductive rights, and gender inequality have any place in a gothic novel. For me, the gothic is exactly the space to explore darkness of any kind, and the practice of othering is one of the darkest corners of human history. – from the Author’s Note

Review posted – 06/27/25

Publication date US trade paperback – 4/29/25
First published UK – hardcover – 10/13/22

I received an ARE of The Ghost Woods from Berkley in return for a fair review and a pinch of fairy dust. Thanks, folks, and thanks to NetGalley for facilitating.

This review is cross-posted on Goodreads. Stop by and say Hi!

=======================================EXTRA STUFF

Links to Cooke’s personal, FB, Instagram, and Twitter pages

Her personal site was strangely unavailable when I was testing this. I am hoping it has been restored by the time you see this.

Profile – from GR

C.J. (Carolyn) Cooke is an acclaimed, award-winning poet, novelist and academic with numerous publications as Carolyn Jess-Cooke and Caro Carver. Her work has been published in twenty-three languages to date. Born in Belfast, C.J. has a PhD in Literature from Queen’s University, Belfast, and is currently Reader in Creative Writing at the University of Glasgow, where she also researches the impact of motherhood on women’s writing and creative writing interventions for mental health. Her books have been reviewed in The New York Times, The Guardian, Good Housekeeping, and the Daily Mail. She has been nominated for an Edgar Award and an ITW Thriller Award, selected as Waterstones’ Paperback Book of the Year and a BBC 2 Pick, and has had two Book of the Month Club selections in the last year. She lives in Scotland with her husband and four children.

Interviews
—–Rachel Herron – Ep. 208: CJ Cooke on the Thrills of Contemporary Gothic Horror – video – 33:29 – begin at 8:10 – not specific to this book, but interesting
—– Murder by the Book – – C.J. Cooke in Conversation with Rachel Harrison

My review of prior work by Cooke
—–The Lighthouse Witches).

Songs/Music
—–The Beatles – I Want To Hold Your Hand – referenced in Chapter 2

Item of Interest from the author
—–Insta – CJ holds forth on the mother-and-baby homes theme from The Ghost Woods on her insta page
—– Google Play Books – Excerpt – audio – 10:36

Items of Interest
—–Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan – a great novel re the Magdalene laundries
—–Wiki – Magdalene laundries in Ireland
—–What Moves the Dead – another novel involving fungi

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Filed under Feminism, Fiction, Horror, Suspense

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December 22, 2023 · 4:47 am

The Invisible Hour by Alice Hoffman

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in every fairy tale girl who is saved is the one who rescues herself.

people in love were such fools, they made up excuses, they wound up doing as they pleased no matter how much good advice they been given.

The Invisible Hour is a twice-told tale of a mother and a daughter.

Ivy Jacobs’ Beacon Hill family did not exactly treat it as a crimson-letter day when the sixteen-year-old informed her parents that she was pregnant by a feckless Harvard sophomore. Despite her tender years, Ivy wanted to see the pregnancy through and keep the baby. Decisions and plans were made, none of them involving input from Ivy. The newborn would be put up for adoption. Ivy bails, getting as far away as she can, which turns out to be a sort-of commune in western Massachusetts.

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Alice Hoffman – image from Penguin Random House – shot by Alyssa Peek

Mia Jacob is the daughter Ivy bore. We meet her at 15. Living in the place to which her mother had fled, The Community. More of a cult really, an authoritarian farm where the leader’s will is law. Joel Davis took Ivy in, married her soon after she’d arrived, so is Mia’s step-father. But child-rearing is communal here, so parenting is not what you or I would recognize. You will recognize the cult-leader, control-freak personality Joel wears like the headgear sported by the QAnon Shaman. Vanity is supposedly being punished, but it is accomplishment, growth, intelligence and independence that are the targets. He likes his followers unquestioning and compliant.

Ivy has stolen parenting moments over the years, so has had a hand in helping Mia find her true self, a young woman who is curious about the world, eager to learn, to investigate, to explore, to read. Discovery of her criminal reading marks her for punishment. When we meet Mia she is, as her mother was, a teen about to flee her oppressive environment.

Although we learn about and spend time with both women, it is Mia who is our primary focus. In a dark time, she considers suicide, but, fortuitously, reads a book that saves her, changing her life, giving her hope, The Scarlet Letter.

We follow her coming of age, assisted by her mother and an understanding librarian in the town where The Community sells their produce.

Her passion for Hawthorne is such that she finds in it a magical power. Alice Hoffman loves her some fairy tales, so it will come as no great shock that one fine day Mia finds herself transported back to the 19th century, and into the presence of her literary love object. Complications ensue. In those, however, we get a sense of Hawthorne, his personality, his material conditions, his family and friends, and his writing challenges. Nice looking fellah, too, to go with that oversized talent.

There is some wonderful imagery woven into the novel. The notion of invisibility is large among these. There are times in which it might be useful to go unseen, as in when one is doing something for which one might be punished, or which are simply secret. On the other hand, it is not so wonderful to be unseen in normal human interactions. Like “Yo, dude, human here. Whaddaya? Blind?” There is some literal invisibility as well.

Apples are a core element as well. There is a particular breed of apple grown in the area, which is no Eden. They seem less associated with The Fall than with a push. Joel uses leaves of that apple tree as a threat. One could certainly see his actions as serpentine. Mia even decides never to eat apples, given the associations she has for them with The Community. Howdaya like dem apples? Johnny Appleseed comes in for some attention, with plantings of his effort bearing local fruit.

The woods as a magical place gets a visit or two. Indeed, magical things go on there. Strange people and buildings appear. There is even one “Once upon a time” in the book. The Woods is where Mia goes to escape.

Much of the tension in the book centers around women taking control of their own lives. This happens in various ways. There is the usual disobedience one would expect, with the most daring taking the greatest risks. Reading figures large in this, as subservience is sustained under the lash of forced-ignorance. Reading is the gateway drug to independent thinking, and dreaming of better. Some women even learn herbal medicine, to see to their needs. The comparisons of the modern day with the repressive Puritan world depicted in The Scarlet Letter are clearly drawn. Plus ça change…

I think it’s a bad idea to write for the moment because the moment passes so quickly. The other thing about time is that what’s right and what’s good and what’s accepted suddenly becomes not. I thought about that with the way women were treated in “The Scarlet Letter,” the way that the Puritans blamed women, and they believed in original sin and that women were responsible for that because of Eve. It all changed, but then it changes back. And then it changes again. A lot of the things that women are coping with right now are not that different, really. The judgment against women. – from the Salon interview

There is a garden in town where all the plants are red. It may feel familiar to frequent readers of Hoffman.

This new book [The Invisible Hour] actually takes place in a town where I wrote a book of connecting stories about called The Red Garden, so it’s the same place. It’s just a novel that takes place in that town. – from the Salon interview

I consider myself an Alice Hoffman fan. While I have not read all her books, I have certainly read more than a couple. Any reader of her books knows that there are certain things one can expect. Among other things, there will be an engaging lead, facing difficult choices, and there will usually be bits, at least, of magic, often of a fairy tale sort. So, one cannot really gripe about a time-travel element pushing things too far, particularly when done in the service of giving us a closer look at a literary icon. My sole gripe is that I felt that the baddie was given too much magical license to pursue his dark ends.

Otherwise, despite it’s title, The Invisible Hours very much deserves to be seen. It offers not only an uplifting, engaging tale of empowerment, but an homage to one of the greats of American literature, and long-form praise of the power, the importance, the necessity of reading. I am sure we can all see the value in that.

“Q: Did you set out to write a novel so deeply rooted in women’s empowerment? How did it evolve to include time travel?”

“A: I started to think about The Scarlet Letter and how modern-day issues for women are not that foreign from issues in that time period. I’m not certain I realized when I first read Nathaniel Hawthorne’s great novel what the deeper meaning of his heroine’s situation is—she has no say over her body or her choices and yet, she does make her own choices. It’s a very brave book.
I’ve always wanted to time travel and been drawn to books about time travel. I think during the time of Covid, when I was writing this, more than ever I want it to be in another time period.” – from A Conversation with Alice Hoffman, an appendix in the book

Review posted – 12/22/23

Publication date – 8/15/23

This review is cross-posted on my site, Goodreads. Stop by and say Hi!

=======================================EXTRA STUFF

Links to the author’s personal, Instagram and FB pages
Profile

Other Hoffman books I have reviewed:
—–1999 – Local Girls
—–2003 – Green Angel
—–2004 – Blackbird House
—–2005 – The Ice Queen
—–2011 – The Red Garden
—–2011 – The Dovekeepers
—–2017 – Faithful
—–2017 – The Rules of Magic
—–2019 – The World That We Knew

Interviews
—–Salon – “I want to believe”: Alice Hoffman is always seeking magic, practical and otherwise by Alison Stine
—–Shondaland – Alice Hoffman Talks Her Latest Novel, ‘The Invisible Hour’ by Sandra Ebejer
—–Harvard Review – An Interview with Alice Hoffman by Christina Thompson

Song
—–Agnes Obel – Brother Sparrow – relevance to the chapter title

Item of Interest from the author
—–Salon – Alice Hoffman: Five amazing tips to help you write your novel

Items of Interest
—–Wiki on Nathaniel Hawthorne
—–Wiki on Johnny Appleseed, mentioned multiple times
—–Gutenberg – full text of The Scarlet Letter
—–Good Will Hunting – Howdaya like dem apples?
—–Wiki on the QAnon Shaman

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Filed under Fantasy, Feminism, Fiction, Historical Fiction, Literary Fiction, Religion

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October 6, 2023 · 12:01 am

First to the Front by Larissa Rinehart

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On Sunday February 18, [1945] the lieutenant in charge of Navy press at the
Oakland air base agreed to see her. Eying her credentials once more, he handed them back.
“And just where was it you wanted to go,” he asked.
She had been rehearsing her response ever since her credentials first arrived in the mail.
“As far forward as you’ll let me,” she replied.
“Be here at 0600, tomorrow,” he said.

…good intentions have rarely paved such a direct route to hell.

Back in World War II there was a small bit of graffiti that appeared in many places across the world. It showed a nose, the fingers of two hands and eyes peeking over a wall, or a fence, along with the words “Kilroy was here.” It was meant to show that American soldiers had been in a particular place, and that they had been everywhere. If Dickey Chapelle had wanted to, she could have left her graffiti across the world as well, not just to show that she had been there, but that she had been the first woman, the first reporter, the first woman reporter who had done the job in many, many dangerous places.

She slept in Bedouin tents in the Algerian desert, and in the foxholes she dug herself in the hills overlooking Beirut. She rode in picket boats between battleships off the coast of Iwo Jima and flew in a nuclear-armed jet stationed on an aircraft carrier in the Aegean sea. On New Year’s Eve 1958, she patrolled the Soviet border with the Turkish infantry. On New Year’s Day 1959, she photographed Fidel Castro’s army as they entered Havana. She jumped out of planes over America, the Dominican Republic, South Korea, Laos, and Vietnam. She heard bullets flying over her head in Asia, North America, Europe, and Africa, and knew that they all sounded the same.

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Engraving of Kilroy on the National World War II Memorial in Washington D.C. – image and descriptive text from Wikipedia

It is likely you have heard of Margaret Bourke-White, famed for her coverage of World War II. You may have heard of Marguerite Higgins, noted for reporting on the Korean War. It is very unlikely you have heard of the subject of this book. Go on Wikipedia, or most other places that aggregate such information, and look up World War II correspondents. Chapelle, whose full name was Georgette Louise Marie Meyer Chapelle, is unlikely to appear. Yet, she did seminal work covering diverse elements of the war, including battles on the front lines. She even trained as a paratrooper, so she could jump into battle zones with American military units, which she did. Lorissa Rinehart seeks to correct that oversight.

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Lorissa Rinehart – Image from Macmillan

She tracks Dickey from her brief stint as a student of aeronautical engineering at MIT. Soon after, she was a journalist in Florida, covering a tragic air show in Cuba. It was her first real reporting “at the front” of a deadly event. And the way ahead was set. When Hitler invaded Poland in 1939, she saw that war was coming with United States. Although Congress did not agree to declare war, it did ramp up production of airplanes and other war materials to support the effort against Nazism.

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Dickey Chapelle – Image from Narratively, courtesy of Wisconsin Historical Society

She learned that she would have to become a photographer if she wanted to cover the war. So she took photography classes. Among her teachers was the man she would marry, Anthony “Tony” Chapelle. Their relationship was never a natural. He was much older, controlling, with a temper, described by some as a consummate con man. He would be jealous of her successes, and seemingly always eager to undermine her confidence. But he was a very successful war photographer and taught her the skills that would enhance her natural eye, helping make her the great photojournalist she would become.

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Dickey Chapelle photographs marines in 1955 – image From Wall Street Journal – from Wisconsin Historical Society

Rinehart tracks not only Chapelle’s adventures on the front lines of many military conflicts, but the skirmishes in which she was forced to engage to gain permission to be there at all. Sexism, as one would expect, forms a major portion of those struggles, but some had to do with her being a journalist at all, regardless of her gender. There is a string of firsts next to her name in the history of journalism, and the word “female” does not appear in all of them. Sadly, she was the first female correspondent killed in Viet Nam.

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Chapelle with Pilots – image from the Wisconsin Historical Society

Dickey was tough as nails, enduring some of the same training as the GIs she was covering. In addition to her considerable coverage of World War II, she was on the front lines of the major hot spots in the Cold War. Not only embedded with marines, Chapelle spent considerable time with troops from Turkey, Castro’s rebels in Cuba, anti-Castro plotters in Florida, secret American forces in Laos, Laotian anti-communist fighters, Algerian revolutionaries, Hungarian rebels, and more. The list is substantial. She would keep diving in, wanting to get the immediate experience of the fighters, the civilians caught in the crossfire, the human impact of war. No Five o’clock Follies for Dickey. She was not interested in being a stenographer for brass talking points, seeing that approach as the enemy of truthful reporting.

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Dickey Chapelle sits and drinks coffee with the FLN Scorpion Battalion Rebels in the Atlas Mountains in Algeria
 – image and descriptive text from the Wisconsin Historical Society – shot by Dickey Chapelle

Chapelle was captured, imprisoned, and tortured in Hungary by Soviet forces. It gave her a particularly pointed perspective on the treatment of prisoners by Western militaries, and the greater implications of the USA not holding to the highest international standards.

One of her greatest gifts was a respect for local cultures and particularly local fighters. She was quite aware of how hard they trained, how hard and far they pushed themselves, how much deprivation they willingly endured. Yet she encountered attitudes from American officers and leaders that regarded non-white fighters through a self-defeating racist lens. Chapelle tried to get the message across to those in command how wrong they were in their regard for the locals the USA was supposedly there to support. Despite occasionally breaking through the brain-truth barrier, that engagement proved a demoralizing, losing battle.

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Iwo Jima Medical Facilities – image from the Wisconsin Historical Society – shot by Dickey Chapelle

Another example of her analytical capability was fed by her time with a community in Laos, led by a cleric, possessed of superior tactical and political approaches. She tried to bring her knowledge of this to American military leaders. It was not a total failure. Although her ideas were not implemented to a meaningful extent, she was eventually brought in by the military to teach what she knew to new officers.

Through much of her work, which included extensive coverage of the on-the-ground Marshall Plan in Europe, her marriage to Tony was seemingly in constant crisis. It was an ongoing war, with dustups aplenty, advances and retreats, damage incurred, but resulted, ultimately, in a separation of forces, which freed Chapelle to pursue her front-line compulsion unimpeded by contrary wishes.

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Fidel Castro with cigar, and five other men
 – image from the Wisconsin Historical Society – shot by Dickey Chapelle

Her employers were not always news outlets. She was employed by the Red Cross to document the need for blood in the war zone. She covered a hospital ship, and medical units on the battlefield. It was hoped that her coverage would give a boost to a national blood drive encouraging Americans to give blood for wounded soldiers. It was a huge success. She worked for the American Friends Service Committee covering military behavior in the Dominican Republic. Other non-profits paid for her to report from other parts of the world. And sundry magazines provided enough employment to keep her working almost constantly.

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A woman in a headscarf crosses an improvised bridge in the vicinity of the village of Tamsweg, escaping from Hungary to Austria
 – image from the Wisconsin Historical Society – shot by Dickey Chapelle

This is an amazing book about an amazing woman.The story of Dickey Chapelle reads like fiction. Even though we know this is a biography, and that what is on the page has already occurred, Rinehart makes the story sing. Her story-telling skill brings us into the scenes of conflict, sometimes terror, so we tremble or gird along with her subject. She taps into the adventure of Dickey’s life, as well as the peril. This is the life that Dickey had sought, and which would be her undoing. The book reads like a novel, fast, exciting, eye-opening, frustrating, enraging, sad, but ultimately satisfying. Dickey Chapelle’s was a life that was as rich with stumbling blocks as it was with jobs well done, but ultimately it was a life well lived, offering concrete benefits to those who were exposed to her work, and an inspiration for many who have followed in her bootsteps.

I side with prisoners against guards, enlisted men against officers, weakness against power.
—Dickey Chapelle

Review posted – 10/6/23

Publication date – 7/11/23

I received a copy of First to the Front from St. Martin’s Press in return for a fair review. Thanks, folks.

This review is cross-posted on Goodreads. Stop by and say Hi!

======================================EXTRA STUFF

Links to Lorissa Rinehart’s personal, FB, and Instagram pages

Profile – from Women Also Know History

Lorissa Rinehart writes about art, war, and their points of intersection.
Her writing has recently appeared in Hyperallergic, Perfect Strangers, and Narratively, among other publications…When not writing she can be found photographing the natural world impinging upon the urban landscape or digging in the dirt with her husband and two sons in Santa Barbara, California. She holds an MA from NYU in Experimental Humanities and a BA in Literature from UC Santa Cruz.

Interviews
—–Writers Talking – Season 2 Episode 7 – Talking to Lorissa Rinehart – podcast – 50:30
—–Hidden History Podcast – A Conversation with Lorissa Rinehart with John Rodriguez – video – 40:18 – begin at 1:43 – there is a transcript on the side
—–Cold War Conversations – Dickey Chapelle – Trailblazing Female Cold War Journalist – audio – 1:01:50

Items of Interest from the author
—–The War Horse – excerpt
—–Facebook reel – Rinehart on Dickey Chapelle showing incredible guts
—–FB – The Top 10 Books She Read to Prepare
—–The History Reader – Escaping Algeria – excerpt
—–Narratively – The Parachuting Female Photojournalist Who Dove Into War Headfirst

Item of Interest
—–Milwaukee PBS – Behind the Pearl Earrings: The Story of Dickey Chapelle, Combat Photojournalist – video documentary- 56:05
—–Political Dictionary – Five o’clock Follies

#womeninwwii #womeninwar #womenjournalists #womenheroes #wwiibooks #wwiihistory #newbooks #mustread

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Filed under American history, Bio/Autobio/Memoir, biography, Feminism, History, Journalism, Non-fiction, Public policy, Reviews, World History

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June 2, 2023 · 12:01 am

Who Gets Believed by Dina Nayeri

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”Who ya gonna believe, me or your own eyes?” – Chico Marx in Duck Soup

The truth isn’t enough. Most people aren’t even listening for it.

Agent Mulder knew that the truth was out there. But what can one do about those who are incapable or unwilling to see it, or worse, those who have a vested interest in disbelief? And how much responsibility to persuade the unpersuadable must be carried by those whose truth is in question? Aliens do figure large in this book, but not in the Mulder/Scully mode.

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Dina Nayeri – image from LitHub

Dina Nayeri has been writing about the truth since at least 2012, with a particular emphasis on immigrant issues, more specifically, on refugees, asylum seekers. Her previous book, The Waiting Place, released in 2022, documented life in Katsikas, a Greek refugee camp, mixing tales from the lives of some of the children there with her own experiences as a refugee from Iran. In The Ungrateful Refugee, 2019, she writes of adult refugees she has met, looking at what being a refugee is like for them. She has also written novels and short fiction, centered on the refugee experience. And that is her primary focus here as well.

The aim of that book [The Ungrateful Refugee] was to really look back on my own experience, and what people go through now to make some sense of the modern displacement experience. One of the sections of the book is about asylum storytelling, and I had so many stories of people getting disbelieved for the stupidest reasons, and the way that the asylum officers listen to the stories. It was very shocking. I wanted to write a lot more about that and, with this book, I wanted to expand that out to just how the vulnerable are listened to, versus people who are very privileged. – from the Ms Magazine interview

In Who Gets Believed, Nayeri takes on a broader perspective. She looks at the challenges people face in trying to get their truths believed not only in refugee situations but in many other walks of life.
There are two factual threads that bind the book together, weaving in and out over the course of three hundred or so pages. First is the tale of K, a Tamil torture victim whose evidence includes a back full of scars. Somehow the system tries to persuade itself that K did that to himself in order to gain entry to the UK. If this sounds Kafkaesque to you, it does to Nayeri, as well. She frequently cites that patron saint of bureaucratic horror as she takes us through the nightmare world of mindlessness, and barely disguised racism, sexism, and xenophobia that is the West’s immigration system. It makes a powerful metaphor for how the system treats those whose rights are supposedly guaranteed by international treaty, but who are more typically treated as rightless, and suspect supplicants.

For most migrants [asylum attorney Maleha Haq] explained, credibility isn’t the reason for rejection. In fact, the issue of credibility is cleverly avoided by using the claimant’s own lack of knowledge about the definition of a word. What is a refugee? Before he is believed, an asylum seeker must choose the right story out of many, the relevant part of a complicated life. It’s like being asked to cut a circular disk from a cylinder. You have many stacked circles, but if you cut at the wrong angle, you have an oval. You’ve failed to present the desired thing.

Another thread is her brother-in-law, someone with a lifetime of mental health issues. Making the credibility tale personal, she writes about not believing he was really incapable of providing for himself in the world, seeing him as a leech on his family, a con-artist working the system. This is a powerful approach, bringing in real-world issues, but with names and faces, and humanizing the core questions even more by weaving in how disbelief, even her own, has impacted her life.

One of the many strengths of the book is Nayeri’s commentary on communication. She tells how language is used as a tool of obfuscation and exclusion. Refugees must learn the nuances of the immigration system in order to gain entrance. They must learn to play the game, memorize the exact right words to use, be ready to offer the right presentation. The unpolished truth is typically fraught with openings that officials, whose default is rejection, (UK Home Office workers are given target numbers for rejecting asylum seekers.) can seize on to deny asylum. It is disheartening to learn that the prospects of a refugee gaining asylum correspond very closely with whether they have legal counsel or not, which bodes ill for most. Again Nayeri offers a personal element, reporting on her experiences with having to learn not just what, but how to present, in order to get what she wanted, whether acceptance to a college of her choice, or a job, post college.

Despite all the talk of leadership and change-making, what you actually learn at Harvard Business School is how to be believed—how to be the ones people want to believe, feel safe believing, given their heuristic shortcuts.

The cost to refugees is clearly higher but the parallels in how one must approach large systems with language resonates like Big Ben at the top of the hour.

…belonging is a performance with a script

Nayeri looks as well at a bit of the world of medicine. She notes that many caregivers disparage sufferers of Sickle Cell Disease, who must repeatedly seek help with pain issues, as “Sicklers,” refusing to take seriously the very real pain experienced by those afflicted. And she notes caregiver disparagement of different ways of grieving in different cultures.

She has a tale of her own about her doctors refusing to treat her the way she wanted, as a reflection of how many doctors do not take seriously the wishes and pain reports of many women patients. This one resonated personally. In late 2021, my own sister experienced this, as, for months, she had complained of pain, but was sent home from each medical visit (when she could even get one. Sometimes this entailed months of waiting.) with little or no relief, and no real examination, certainly no effective one, of underlying causation. After all, she was just an old lady, and old people have pain all the time. No big whoop. The pain finally became too much and she was rushed to the ER. Subsequent surgery revealed a return of a stomach cancer after a ten-year-remission, nicely metastasized. She was dead within weeks. The risk entailed in medical professionals ignoring claims of pain is very real.

She takes on The Reid Technique, a widely used interrogation regimen routinely abused by police, with a chargeable outcome being a much higher priority than truth-seeking. She looks at how the methodology is used to generate inconsistencies, which are then portrayed as evidence of dishonesty. The obverse of this is firefighters being granted exceptional credibility when testifying as expert witnesses, despite there sometimes being little scientific merit to what is claimed on the stand.

The Reid Technique begins with an assumption of guilt. It was originally intended to be used only when the interrogator is absolutely certain of guilt. Even then, it was intended not to extract a confession that might condemn the suspect on its own (the technique is, after all, so torturous that even its creators didn’t believe it would cause an innocent person to confess, they seemed aware of that risk), but to uncover new, unknown details—intimate ones about the why and the how—that could then be corroborated. It was that supporting physical evidence that would convict the guilty—a body, a weapon, some real proof.

It might be easy to intone a general rule of Trust No One, but refugees do not have that luxury. Unless an asylum-seeker can somehow get legal representation, they are forced to trust people who are in a position to help or harm their cases.

There is plenty more in here, dives on how we persuade ourselves to believe thing that are not true, how politics creates truths, even alters our bodies, on how we only see what we are looking for, how having stories told publicly makes them more real, how consultants befuddle their clients. You will learn a lot. You will also feel a lot. Nayeri’s stories are moving, upsetting, and hopefully, motivating. They will force you to think, and, hopefully, engage in some introspection. Her willingness to own her own biases shows that she is not looking for justice solely in the world outside, but within herself. Red Smith famously said that writing was easy, All you do is sit down at a typewriter, cut open a vein, and bleed. I imagine there was a lot of cleaning up necessary in Nayeri’s writing places while she worked on this book. Also, she is not trying to get you to like her. This is an honest portrayal of a complicated person, one who struggled trying to fit in with American society as a child, and who maneuvered the ivy halls of Harvard and Princeton, and a premier spot in the consultoverse, in her drive for success.

Who Gets Believed is a powerful look not just at the terrifying refugee experience, but at the wider problems of disbelief that are grounded in biased or unsupported notions. I Want To Believe that the issues raised in this book are being addressed, but while I expect that there are awareness programs being run by some healthcare provider institutions, I seriously doubt there is anything being done by police departments to cope with abuse of the Reid Technique. And I would bet that immigration services, swamped as they are with applicants, and chronically understaffed, are unlikely to have done much about basing asylum denials on firmer reasons than what appears the case today. The truth of what is happening in these parts of our world is definitely out there. Dina Nayeri has brought some of that truth to the rest of us. Belief is only needed if there is no proof. Nayeri offers evidence. These are truths you need to know.

this variability in judicial standards is one of the greatest flaws of the American asylum system. Why should the weight of any kind of evidence vary by judge? Should one’s fate depend on the compassion or politics of the judge assigned? Should it vary by administration?…asylum grant rates go up and down based on who the attorney general is. That’s not just at the judge level but at the screening stage. The number of people found to have credible fear and entitled to be seen by a judge depends on political pressure.

Review posted – 06/02/23

Publication date – 03/07/23

I received a copy of Who Gets Believed? from Catapult in return for a fair review.

This review is cross-posted on Goodreads. Stop by and say Hi!

=======================================EXTRA STUFF

Profile – from Wikipedia
Nayeri was born in Isfahan, Iran. Her mother was a doctor and her father a dentist. She spent the first 8 years of her life in Isfahan but fled Iran with her mother and brother Daniel in 1988 because her mother had converted to Christianity and the moral police of the Islamic Republic had threatened her with execution.[1]Nayeri, her mother and brother spent two years in Dubai and Rome as asylum seekers and eventually settled in Oklahoma, in the United States.[2] Her father remained in Iran, where he still lives. She has written several works of non-fiction, novels for adult and children, and numerous articles.

Links to the Nayeri’s personal, FB, Instagram, and Twitter pages

Interviews
—–NPR – Dina Nayeri wants you to question ‘Who Gets Believed’ | Book of the Day – with Juana summers – audio – 8:44
—–Ms Magazine – Telling the ‘Right’ Story: Dina Nayeri on Refugee Credibility – by Jera Brown
—–LitHub – Manufacturing Lies: DinaNayeri on How Our Cultural and Bureaucratic Norms Often Betray the Truth with Whitney Terrell and V.V. Ganeshananthan

Songs/Music
—–The Weeknd – High for This– mentioned in Chapter 5

Items of Interest from the author
—–PBS – Is the distinction between migrant and refugee meaningful? – Video – 3:02
—–Muck Rack – Articles by Dina Nayeri – links to pieces in diverse publications

Items of Interest
—–NY Times – Many Women Have an Intense Fear of Childbirth, Survey Suggests by Roni Caryn Rabin
—–AP – Why do so many Black women die in pregnancy? One reason: Doctors don’t take them seriously by Kat Stafford
—–Wisconsin Criminal Defense – Understanding the Reid Technique in Police Interrogations – The Law Offices of Christopher J. Cherella
—–Project Gutenberg – The Trial by Franz Kafka – full text for free

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Filed under American history, Bio/Autobio/Memoir, Feminism, History, Non-fiction, Psychology and the Brain, Public policy, Reviews

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April 14, 2023 · 12:01 am

The Adventures of Amina Al-Sirafi by Shannon Chakraborty

book cover

We used to joke that of the three of us, I could kill you up close, Tinbu could kill you from another ship, and Dalila could kill you from a different city three days later.

I’d grown up feeling terribly unusual; out of place and never at peace with the fate afforded young girls. In a hidden corner of my heart, I nursed embarrassing dreams. That I was not the child of my parents, but the daughter of a tribe of female warriors who flew upon winged horses. Or I was heir to a hidden sea kingdom below the waves, and the whispered sighs I heard from the water when we sailed and the strange lightning in the distance were not natural weather phenomena but magic, my true family calling to me. Then I grew into an adult. One who learned the hard way that if there was magic in this world, it could be as brutal and cunning as the worst monsters out of a fairy tale.

We get to see some of that in action.

Amina al-Sirafi has led a storied existence, leaving home at sixteen and making her way on the briny deep, not just a pirate, but a female captain, a nakhudha, notorious for her success at parting the wealthy from their wealth. Not exactly a Robin Hood, not particularly bloodthirsty either. But life moves on. The years take their toll, and one seeks out less perilous enterprises, particularly after a singularly harrowing experience, particularly when pregnant. Years on, Amina is living a sedate existence, raising her ten-year-old daughter. But life comes calling, in a way that might be familiar to Michael Corleone. A rich widow, Salima, the mother of Asif, a crewman of Amina’s who had been lost, wants to hire her to retrieve her granddaughter, 16yo Dunya, Asif’s daughter.

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Shannon Chakraborty – image from her Twitter pages

Well, maybe not quite lost. An erstwhile Crusader, Falco Palemenestra, a Frank (local speak for European) with a profound lust for magical objects, appears to have made off with young Salima’s greatest treasure, 16yo Dunya. Granny wants her back. She makes Amina an offer she cannot refuse.

And the chase is on. But of course, Amina has to pull together a crew. This is where we meet her erstwhile first mate, Tinbu, who has been in charge of her ship since she went on sabbatical. Much more fun is her good pal Dalila, a professional poisoner. You do not want to sip from the wrong cup in that workshop.

Easily one of the most enjoyable topics to research was criminal activity—specifically overwrought stories and urban legends about criminal activity—in the medieval world. All the cons, tricks, and poisons in this book are pulled from history: there’s actually a thirteenth century charlatan’s guide (recently translated into English by the Library of Arabic Literature) which discusses both the three cups game still used to swindle gullible tourists today and the numerous knock-out drugs Dalila employs. The guild Dalila hails from—the Banu Sasan—was also real, or as “real” as the fantastical odes recited about it were. – From the Fantasy Hive interview

There are jails to break, corrupt local officials to deal with, and a ship to wrest from impoundment. Cons are run, disguises are used, buckles are swashed. And a-sailing we will go. Of course, there are further stops to be made, intel to gather, and some dark magic to encounter. There is a significant supporting cast, with the main characters receiving their due. And then there is Raksh.

Let’s talk about the night I accidentally married a demon.

Oopsy. Amina has issues with relationships. This one did not end well. And now he’s ba-ack. And he is a total hoot, well, except for the darker elements, of course.

So many of the characters in this book are coming to terms with past misdeeds or trying stick to a more righteous path and then you have this utterly selfish, sexy creature of chaos and trickery just waltz in and repeatedly betray them to save his own skin and spin “a better story.” And that’s the very point of him—he’s not human, he’s very much meant to be a relic of a forgotten age when people did tell stories of meddling, petty gods and monsters, a supernatural aspect that naturally feeds on human ambition and wouldn’t even understand why he’s expected to feel remorse for doing so. It was fun to create such a foil for Amina herself and really delve into the almost alien psyche of such a being. – from The Fantasy Hive interview

We learn that Falco is particularly interested in a frighteningly powerful magical object, The Moon of Saba (which has absolutely nothing to do with dropping trou, promise). Can Amina save the teen, and keep Falco from getting his mitts on this very dangerous treasure?

The largest pearl in the world; a miniature moon said to have been snatched from the sky by a lovelorn fairy and gifted to Queen Bilqis, who made it the centerpiece of her crown. A gem believed to bestow upon its owner countless wishes, supernatural sight, and unending good fortune.

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Map of al-Sirafi’s adventure

Amina stands out from the usual superhero sorts for two reasons. The first is that she is a lifelong criminal, (Make me good, but not yet?) even though she seems to have a good heart. Second is that she is a middle-aged mom. She has to struggle not only with the challenge of her aquatic mission, but with the conflict between her desire to stay at home to raise her daughter and her need for seafaring adventure. Parenting and piracy seem poor partners. There are other ongoing thematic concerns. Coming to terms with one’s past deeds is among them. There are plenty of ledgers to balance.

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Teuta, Queen of the Illyrian Ardiaei tribe, leads a pirate expedition against rome. – image from WorldHistory.org

The focus of the story is on the humans. Sure, there is a major magical supporting character, and some of the humans dabble in dark arts. But they remain people. That said, there is plenty of magic in the air, and water. Some creatures introduced in the Daevabad trilogy put in appearances here. There is a kaiju-level sea beast, and plenty more. I hesitate to say this, but it seemed at one point that more was less, and that there were maybe too many such roaming and flitting about.

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(I can only imagine what Ray Harryhausen would do with such a rich trove of material. Above is a still from The 7th Voyage of Sindbad

There is treasure. There is an island, and there is even a possible reference to Treasure Island, although, really, it may just be me projecting, and islands and treasure are merely standard tropes for the genre.

I straightened up with care, pinching my brow to keep black spots from dancing before my eyes.

Per usual, Chakraborty brings her effervescent sense of humor to her writing. There are plenty of LOL moments, particularly when Amina interacts with Dalila or Raksh.

“What about you, Lady Dalila?” Noor asked. “Is there anyone back home you are eager to return to?”
Dalila picked at her teeth. “I had to abandon a time sensitive experiment with extremely promising indications as a knock-out gas.”
“For pain relief,” I amended quickly. “Dalila is our…healer.”
Noor’s brows rose slightly. “Ah, yes. Majed speaks frequently of how you ‘healed’ him when you first met.”
Dalila rolled her eyes. “It was hardly the worst of my poisons. There are some physicians who actually believe it beneficial to vomit blood every now and then. It balances the humors.”

In addition, because Chakraborty is a historian at heart, she has delivered to us a treasure of intel about the world of this time and place.

When I started working on Amina, the goal I had for myself, and I think I wrote this in the author’s note at the end, was that I wanted to make it completely historically accurate—outside of the plot. I did a ton of research. There’s been an incredible amount of new work done on the medieval Indian Ocean, but you’re still looking at 12th-century texts. It’s almost 1,000 years ago, and there is a great limit to what we know. – from The Portalist interview

The series is set a few centuries before Chakraborty’s Daevabad trilogy, but exists in the same general corner of the planet. Some nods are offered to that world, including a small part for a magical creature from the Djinn tales. And a bit of snark.

“Oh, those weren’t humans. Those were daevas.”
“What in God’s name is a daeva?”
He held up a hand. “You don’t want to know, trust me. More overdramatic creatures have never existed. And they’re not even the worst ones here. Everyone likes to complain about humans, but let me tell you…spend a couple centuries with the inhabitants of the unseen realms, and you’ll be aching to haunt a mortal latrine.”

There is a form of ecstasy that occurs in reading some books. Some are serious, (Serena pops to mind) others are more of the entertainment sort. I remember, as a kid, being rapt by some of the great classic adventures, by Robert Louis Stevenson, Jules Verne, and others. I was desperate to continue reading, despite the unwillingness of my eyes, and my mother reminding me, yet again, to turn the flashlight off under my covers. Well settled into middle age, the Harry Potter series offered the same sort of excitement. About six years ago, I was delighted to report that I felt that joy once more, at a grizzled time of life, on reading Shannon Chakraborty’s Daevabad trilogy, about djinns and sundry contemporary creatures and figures. While these books did nothing to iron out the wrinkles that brace my eyes, or straighten a spine that has strayed much too far from the standard shape, they did offer many hours of pure, innocent joy, the sort I experienced when my soul was more truly unstained. I am overjoyed to report that Chakraborty has worked her magic again. The Adventures of Amina el-Sirafi, the first in a promised trilogy, is a treat for the eyes and the imagination. Unlike Michael Corleone, I am eager to be pulled back in. You will be, too. No Shanghaiing required. Climb aboard, me hearties, and let’s set sail. The adventure has just begun.

I wanted to travel the world and sail every sea. I wanted to have adventures, to be a hero, to have my tales told in courtyards and street fairs where perhaps kids who’d grown up like me, with more imagination than means might be inspired to dream. Where women who were told there was only one sort of respectful life for them could listen to tales of another who’d broken away—and thrived when she’d done so.

Review posted – 4/14/23

Publication date – 2/28/23

I received an ARE of The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi from Harper Voyager (well, my book goddess secured this particular treasure for me) in return for a fair review. Thanks, dear, and thanks HV.

This review has been cross-posted on GoodReads

=======================================EXTRA STUFF

Links to the author’s personal, Twitter and FB pages

My reviews of other books by the author
—–2017 – The City of Brass (The Daevabad Trilogy #1)
—–2019 – The Kingdom of Copper (The Daevabad Trilogy #2)
—–2020 – The Empire of Gold (The Daevabad Trilogy #3)

Interviews
—–Lit Reactor – Shannon Chakraborty: Navigating the Creative Voyage by Jena Brown
—–The Portalist – Shannon Chakraborty Breaks Down Her Writing Process and New Book, The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi by Jena Brown
—–Bookpage – Shannon Chakraborty sets sail for a new horizon by Linda M. Castellitto
—–The Fantasy Hive – INTERVIEW WITH SHANNON CHAKRABORTY (THE ADVENTURES OF AMINA AL-SIRAFI)
—–Writer’s Digest – Shannon Chakraborty: On Humor and Joy in Fantasy by Robert Lee Brewer

Items of Interest from the author
—–Fantasy Hive – Excerpt – Chapter 1
—–Tor – Excerpt – Chapter 5

Items of Interest
—–Americanliterature.com – Arabian Nights – The Story of Sindbad the Sailor
—– Godfather III – Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in!
—–World History.Org – Queen Teuta of Illyria

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February 24, 2023 · 12:01 am

Stone Blind by Natalie Haynes

book cover

Perseus…has no interest in the well being of any creature if it impedes his desire to do whatever he wants. He is a vicious little thug and the sooner you grasp that, and stop thinking of him as a brave boy hero, the closer you’ll be to understanding what actually happened.

Who decides what is a monster?

When Natalie Haynes wrote Pandora’s Jar, a collection of ten essays on the women in Greek myths, she included a chapter on Medusa. In nine-thousand words she offered a non-standard view of the story of heroic Perseus slaying the gorgon. But the story stayed with her, well, the rage about the story of how ill-treated this supposed monster had been, anyway. If the feeling remained that powerful for so long, it was a message. She needed to devote a full book to this outrage in order to get any peace. Thus Stone Blind.

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Natalie Haynes – image from Hay Festival

We learn how Medusa came by her notable do. After being sexually assaulted by Poseidon in one of Athena’s temples, the goddess was appalled. No, not by the rape. I mean a god’s gotta do what a god’s gotta do. But that he raped Medusa in Athena’s temple! Desecration! Well, that cannot go unpunished. So, Athena seeks revenge on Poseidon by assaulting Medusa, figuring, we guess, that this might make Poseidon sad, or something. Uses her goddess powers to turn Medusa’s hair to snakes and her eyes to weapons of mass destruction. Any living creature she looks at will be lithified.

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Image from Mythopedia – Head of Medusa by Peter Paul Rubens – 1618

Then there is the other half of this tale, Perseus. We are treated to his dodgy beginnings, another godly sexual assault. He is not portrayed here as the hero so many ancient writings proclaim. Decent enough kid, living with his mom, Danae, and a stepfather sort, until mom is threatened with being forcibly married to the local king, a total douche. Junior tries to make a deal to get her out of it, said douche sending him on a seemingly impossible quest. Good luck, kid. I mean, seriously, how in hell can he hope to bring back a gorgon’s head?

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Image from Ancient Origins

Zeus feels a need to help the kid out. I mean, Perseus may be a bastard, but hey, in Greek mythology, that would put him in the majority. Am I right? Still, he is Zeus’s bastard, so Pop does what he can to help him out, sending along two gods to coach and aid the lad as needed. Hermes and Athena snark all over Perseus, pointing out his many weaknesses and flaws, while providing some very real assistance. They may not hold the kid in high regard, but neither can they piss off the boss. Very high school gym, and totally hilarious.

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Image from Wiki – Perseus Turning Phineus and his followers to stone by Luca Giordano – 1680s

Which should not be terribly surprising. Haynes is not just an author and classicist, but a stand-up comedian. You can glean what you need to know about her comedic career from the Historical Archivist interview linked in EXTRA STUFF. There is plenty of humor beside godly dissing of Perseus. Athena (referred to as Athene in the book) tries to talk an unnamed mortal into signing on to a huge battle between the Olympian gods and the Giants, new powerhouse versus the current champs. It is clearly a tough sell.

‘If you get trodden on by a giant or a god – which wouldn’t be intentional on our part, incidentally – but in the heat of battle one of us might step in the wrong place and there you’d be. . . . Well, would have been. Anyway, it would be painless. Probably very painful just before it was painless, but not for long.’… ‘Come on. If you do die, I’ll put in a word for you to get a constellation. Promise.’

There are plenty more like these, including a particularly shocking approach to relieving a really bad headache.

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Image from Scary For Kids (reminds me of the nun I had for eighth grade)

But the whole quest experience uncovers Perseus’s inner god-like inclinations. He becomes an entitled rich kid with far too many high-powered connections helping him out. And develops a taste for slaughter. When Andromeda sees a knight in shining armor, come to save her from certain death by sea monster, her parents suggest that “Maybe, Sweetie, you might consider how gleeful he was when he was murdering defenseless people?” Or noting that if he had really been solid on keeping promises he might have headed straight home to save his mom with that snaky head instead of stopping off to frolic in blood for a few days. “This boy’s gonna be trouble, Andy.”

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Image from Classical Literature

The gods have issues. The Housewives of Olympus could well include some unspeakable husbands, who seem to have a thing for forcing themselves on whomever (or whatever) catches their eye. As a group they are always on the lookout for slights, insults, or minor border transgressions. What a bunch of whiny bitches! But with power, unfortunately, to make life unspeakable for us mere mortals, whose life expectancy is not even a rounding error to their eternal foolishness. Medusa, in that way, was one of us. There is uncertainty about Perseus.

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Image from Talking Humanities

Sisters abound. Apparently, triple-sister deities was a thing for the ancient Greeks. We are treated to POVs from Medusa’s two gorgon sibs, and look on as Perseus hoodwinks the three hapless Graiai sisters, who are doomed to having to share a single eye and a single tooth among them. (Could you please wipe that thing off before you pass it along?) The Nereids are more numerous (50) and a bit of a dark force here.

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From Greek Legends and Myths – by Arnold Böcklin (1827–1901)

Never one to stick to a single POV, Haynes offers us many discrete perspectives over seventy-five chapters. Fifteen are one-offs. The Gorgoneion leads the pack with thirteen chapters, followed by Athene with eleven, Andromeda with eight and Medusa with seven. There are some unusual POVs in the mix, a talking head (no, not David Byrne), a crow, and an olive tree among them. Haynes dips into omniscient narrator mode for a handful of chapters as well.

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Image From Empire

As noted in EXTRA STUFF, there is a particularly offensive sculpture of Perseus holding Medusa’s severed head. Not only has he murdered her, he is standing on her corpse. You can see how this would piss off a classicist who knows that Medusa never hurt anyone. Damage done by her death-gaze was inadvertent or done by others using her head as a weapon. And this supposedly brave warrior killed this woman in her sleep. Studly, no? And with all sorts of magical help from his father’s peeps. What a guy!

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Image from Smithsonian American art Museum – by Lucien Levy-Dhurmer – 1915

Natalie Haynes set out to tell Medusa’s story, and it is completely clear by the end that the monstrosity here is the treatment this innocent female mortal received, at the hands of abusers both male and female. Haynes keeps the story rolling with the diverse perspectives and short chapters, so that even if you remember most of the classic myth there will be plenty of mythological history you never knew. You will also laugh out loud, which is a pretty good trick for what is really a #METOO novel. The abuse of the powerless, of women in particular, by the powerful has been going on only forever. Haynes has made clear just how the stories we have told for thousands of years reinforce, and even celebrate, that abuse. Next up for her, fiction-wise, is Medea. I can’t wait.

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Image from Smithsonian American Art Museum – by Alice Pike Barney – 1892

Medusa may not have been a goddess, but it seems quite clear that Natalie Haynes is. This is a wonderful read, not to be missed.

He’s just a bag of meat wandering round, irritating people.’

Review posted – 02/24/23

Publication dates – Hardcover
———-UK – September 15, 2022 Mantle
———-USA – February 7, 2021 – Harper

This review has been cross-posted on GoodReads. Stop by and say Hi!

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Image from Wiki by Caravaggio – 1597

=======================================EXTRA STUFF

Links to the author’s personal, Twitter and Instagram pages

Interviews
—–The Bookseller – Natalie Haynes on challenging patriarchal historical narratives and championing female voices by Alice O’Keeffe
—–CBC – Natalie Haynes on the fantastic and fearsome women of Greek myth
—–LDJ Historical Archivist – Brick Classicist of the Year 2023 Natalie Haynes – video – 16:46 – this is delicious
—–Harvard Bookstore – Natalie Haynes discusses “Stone Blind” – video 1:03:55 – – This is amazing! So much info. You will learn a lot here.

My review of other work by the author
—–2021 (USA) – A Thousand Ships – Helen of Troy and the women of the Homeric epics

Items of Interest
—–Wiki on Gorgoneion
—–The Page 69 Test – Stone Blind – a bit of fluff
—–Widewalls – An Icon of Justice – Or Something Else? A New Medusa in a NYC Park – interesting contemporary sculptural response to a classical outrage.

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Left: Benvenuto Cellini – Perseus holding the head of Medusa, 1545–1554. Image creative commons / Right: Luciano Garbati – Medusa With The Head of Perseus, 2008-2020. Installed at Collect Pond Park. Courtesy of MWTH Project – images and text from Widewalls article
The MWTH (Medusa with the head) image is sometimes accompanied by the ff: “Be thankful we only want equality and not payback.”

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February 17, 2023 · 12:01 am

The Last Chairlift by John Irving

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Think of your first good kiss. Was it life-changing, or was it no big deal? Do you remember how old you were? Did it matter, at the time, who gave it to you? Do you even remember who it was?
I’ll tell you this: when you’re thirteen and your mother gives you your first good kiss, you better hope someone matches it or eclipses it—soon. That’s your only hope.

Autobiography just isn’t good or bad enough to work as fiction… Unrevised, real life is just a mess.

The overall format is one of a frame, with Adam Brewster opening by letting us know that this is the story of his life and times, then returning to turn out the lights when the tale has been completed. It is a family saga of Irving’s era, 50’s 60s, (Vietnam) 70s, 80s (Reagan, AIDS) et al, to the mad, reactionary violence of the 21st century. Adam Brewster, a writer and screenwriter, is our narrator for a look at the sexual politics of a lifetime, from his birth in 1941 to his later days some eighty years on.

Adam’s mother, Rachel Brewster (Little Ray), was a nearly-pro ski nut, who spent large parts of every year on the slopes, settling for work as an instructor. That left Adam in the hands of his grandmother for much of his upbringing, assisted by a passel of relations. He would hunger for time with his only known parent for much of his life, a core element of the novel.

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John Irving – image from Outside Magazine

Readers of John Irving will recognize much that is familiar, from his prior work and his life. The novel is set in Exeter, New Hampshire, Irving’s home town; includes a benign stepparent teaching at Phillips Exeter (as his actual stepfather did); includes the narrator as a student there. Yep, Irving attended. There is wrestling, of course. Bears are limited to a kind of snowshoe shaped like their paws. A hotel figures large. There is an absent biological father, (Irving’s father was in the US Army Air Force. He never met him.); a mother with too many secrets; there is also reference made to an inappropriate relationship between an adult woman and an underage boy. (something Irving himself experienced); considerable attention is directed to feeling like, to being, an outsider.

”That’s just who you are, Adam,” my older cousin said. “There’s a foreignness inside you—beginning with where you come from. The foreignness is in you—that’s just who you are. You and me and Ray—we’re outliers.”

In fact, Irving turns the tables here, as Adam, as the only straight among the main characters, is the outsider in his own family, always the last to get things, he is nonetheless loved and supported by his sexually diverse relations.

His mother’s lifelong lover, Molly, effectively his stepmother, tells Adam, “There’s more than one way to love people, Kid.” It serves as a core message for the book and for Irving’s oeuvre. One of the main characters is transgender. He first wrote a sympathetic trans character in The World According to Garp, in 1978. So, when his son, born many years after the book was published, came out to his parents as trans, she knew her father would be completely supportive.

The politics of divergent sexuality through time manifests in diverse venues. Raucous comedic material performed at a comedy club in one era is considered too much for a later sensibility, a new puritanism of correctness. Safety for being different is a concern. Adam is very worried when his stepfather is out in their town dressed as a woman, even trails him sometimes in case a backup is needed. Reagan’s unwillingness to address AIDS until six years into his presidency is noted. Acceptance increases over time, but increased acceptance sparks increased resistance. A performer of material deemed unacceptable to some becomes a target for violence in a more disturbed climate.

In addition to the overarching theme of looking at sexual politics, sexuality is shown as far less important than the connection between people. Things that may seem sexual actually have a lot less to do with sex than connection. For instance, Adam and his mother often sleep together, in the slumbering, not biblical sense, well past the age where that is generally deemed ok. There is another relationship in which a straight man and a gay woman share a bed, sans fooling around.

There is hilarity aplenty, not least with Adam’s young sequence of damaged or damaging lovers. Lots of cringy LOL material there. I counted a dozen “LOLs” in my notes, some for entire chapters.

And then there are ghosts. Irving calls this a ghost story. I refer you to a piece on his site that addresses this directly.

Ghosts don’t just warn us about the future; they remind us of what we’ve forgotten about the past. All this is to say, I have a history of being interested in ghosts. And here come the ghosts again. In my new novel…the ghosts are more prominent than before; the ghosts, or hints of ghosts, begin and end the novel.

We all have ghosts we live with, but the ones here are visible, well, to some, anyway. They hang out in large numbers at a hotel in Aspen, but also turn up at home. The spectres are historical and familial, with some able to interact with the physical world (sometimes with LOL results) sometimes condemned to remain non-impactful. They do indeed, as noted above, remind us of the past, sometimes darkly so, but some offer direction and comfort. And Irving uses his behemoth of a novel to keep generating new ones. They pass over in a wide range of ways; lightning, murder on a stage, sudden avalanche, cancer, suicide, murder in a hotel, falling from a chairlift, leaping from a chairlift, death in war, et al. Falkner famously said “The past is never dead. It’s not even the past.” I guess it could be said for many characters in The Last Chairlift that even the dead are never entirely dead.

Adam’s profession offers ample opportunity for Irving (winner of a National Book Award AND a screenwriting Oscar) to present a wealth of material about writing, both for the screen and for print.

“My life could be a movie,” you hear people say, but what do they mean? Don’t they mean their lives are too incredible to be real—too unbelievably good or bad? “My life could be a movie” means you think movies are both less than realistic and more than you can expect from real life. “My life could be a movie” means you think your life has been special enough to get made as a movie; it means you think your life has been spectacularly blessed or cursed.
But my life is a movie, and not for the usual self-congratulatory or self-pitying reasons. My life is a movie because I’m a screenwriter. I’m first and foremost a novelist, but even when I write a novel, I’m a visualizer—I’m seeing the story unfold as if it were already on film.

Imagining the stories you want to write, and waiting to write them, is part of the writing process—like thinking about the characters you want to create, but not creating them. Yet when I did this, when I was just a kid at Exeter—when I thought about writing all the time, but I never finished anything I was writing—this amounted to little more than daydreaming.

you don’t see with hindsight in a first draft. You have to finish the first draft to see what you’ve missed.

Fiction writers like what we call truthful exaggeration. When we write about something that really happened—or it almost happened, could have happened—we just enhance what happened. Essentially, the story remains real, but we make it better than it truly was, or we make it more awful—­depending on our inclination.

There are many more—it is a very long book—but this last one in particular speaks very directly to Irving’s process. As noted up top, he returns to familiar themes and situations. In interviews he says that he begins with the same life experiences, but then changes where they go, how they morph, as if his creative process was to take the stem cells of his experiences and direct them to grow into a wide range of possible pieces. Same source, different outcomes.

It is not just the characters and situation that have morphed, it is the form as well. As Adam is a screenwriter as well as a novelist, and as this story is Adam’s, it is fitting that how he perceives the world makes its way into how he presents his story. There are long chapters that are written in screenplay format, complete with fade-ins, fade-outs, off-screen narration, closeups, wide-shots, the whole toolkit. It is an interesting tactic. I found it off-putting, but it does allow for a different approach to the material.

He does not just talk about writing per se, but incorporates into the novel considerable attention to his favorite book of all time, Moby Dick. (he has the last line of Moby Dick tattooed on his left forearm) This book opens with My mother named me Adam…, which resonates with Call me Ishmael and no less with …I am born from David Copperfield, Dickens being a particular Irving favorite. He sees himself as more of a 19th century novelist than a 21st century one.

…because those novels have always represented the model of the form for me. I loathed Hemingway. I thought Faulkner was excessive. Fitzgerald was ok, but lazy at times. I was enamored of the kind of novel all of my classmates at school despised.

References to Melville’s masterpiece (sometimes hilariously), Dickens, Ibsen, and plenty of others abound.

It is pretty clear that John Irving has had an interesting life. Eighty years old at the time of publication, he does not see The Last Chairlift as his last hurrah. In fact, he signed a three-book deal with Simon and Schuster, of which this was merely the first. He promises, though, that the next two will be a lot shorter.

Until then, this one will certainly suffice. Irving has lost none of his sense of humor. This book was more than occasionally laugh-out-loud funny. He has lost none of his feel for writing relatable humans. While some of the supporting cast are painted in broad strokes, to illustrate this or that sociopolitical issue of a given time, the main ones, and even hordes of second-tier characters are drawn with fine lines, and deep sensitivity. He has lost none of his vision, seeing clearly the currents of the eras considered, and how those have impacted social and political possibility for rounded humans who do not fit the square holes of a boilerplate majority. For all that Irving writes about people who are different, he makes it eminently clear that in matters that count we all share the same needs, to be loved, seen, and respected for who we are. Here’s hoping it will not be another seven years until we get to enjoy another of John Irving’s marvelous works.

…the dead don’t entirely go away—not if you see them on the subway, or in your heart.

Review posted – February 17, 2023

Publication date – October 18, 2022

I received an ARE of The Last Chairlift from Simon & Schuster in return for a fair review. Thanks, folks, and thanks to NetGalley for facilitating.

This review has been cross-posted on GoodReads. Stop by and say Hi!

=======================================EXTRA STUFF

Irving’s personal and FB pages

Interviews
—–CBS Sunday Morning – John Irving: A Writer’s Life with Rita Braver – a delight – Sees himself as a 19th century writer
—–Late Night with Seth Meyers – John Irving Doesn’t Write a Book Until He Knows How It’s Going to End
—–Freethought Matters – Freethought Matters: John Irving
 – video – 28:08 – with Ann Laurie Gaylor and Dan Barker – Interview begins at 2:57 – focus on chairlift begins at about 18:00
—–NPR Podcasts – Book of the Day – ‘The Last Chairlift’ is John Irving’s latest novel on sexual politics with Scott Simon – Audio – 10:26
—–Hazlift – ‘Hope is an Elusive Quality’: An Interview with John Irving by Haley Cunningham
—–Toronto Star – Hugging us back in the dark: John Irving on making us care about his characters, sexual politics, and the ghosts in his new book ‘The Last Chairlift’ by Deborah Dundas

Items of Interest from the author
—–Here Come the Ghosts Again on ghosts in his novels
—–CBS News – excerpt
—–Lithub – excerpt

My review of another book by Irving
—–In One Person

Items of Interest
—– Moby Dick – Full text – with annotations
—–David Copperfield – Full text – with footnote annotations

Items of Interest from the author
—– Here Come the Ghosts Againon ghosts in his novels

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June 17, 2022 · 12:01 am

Woman of Light by Kaji Fajardo-Anstine

book cover

The radio smelled of dust and minerals, and in some ways reminded Luz of reading tea leaves. They were similar, weren’t they? She saw images and felt feelings delivered to her through dreams and pictures. Maybe those images rode invisible waves, too? Maybe Luz was born with her own receiver. She laughed, considering how valuable such a thing must be, a radio built into the mind.

Maria Josie insisted Diego and Luz must learn the map, as she called it, and she showed them around first on foot and later by streetcar. She wore good walking shoes, and dressed herself and the children in many layers. It tends to heat up, she had said, another moment, it might hail. The siblings learned to be cautious. It was dangerous to stroll through mostly Anglo neighborhoods, their streetcar routes equally unsafe. There were Klan picnics, car races, cross burnings on the edge of the foothills, flames like tongues licking the canyon walls, hatred reaching into the stars.

There is a lot going on in this novel, so buckle up. Focused on the experiences of 17/18 year-old Luz Lopez–the Woman of Light of the story–in Depression-era Denver, the story alternates between her contemporary travails and the lives of her ancestors. The beginning is very Moses-like, a swaddling Pidre being left by his mother on the banks of an arroyo in The Lost Territory in 1868. We follow Pidre and his children and grandchildren into the 1930s. All have special qualities. Among them, Luz, his granddaughter, reads tea leaves, seeing visions of both past and future. Diego, his grandson, would definitely belong to House Slytherin in a different universe. He tames and performs with rattlesnakes.

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Kali Fajardo-Anstine in the Western History & Genealogy Department of the Denver Public Library – image from 5280 – photo by Caleb Santiago Alvarado

This is a story about stories, how telling them carries on identity, while ignoring them can help erase the culture of a people. Pidre is noted as a talented story-teller, urged, as he is given away, to remember your line. KFA remembers hers, giving a voice to Chicano-Indigenous history.

My ancestors were incredibly hard working, generous, kind, and brilliant Coloradans. But they were also poor and brown and this meant our stories were only elevated within our communities. When I began writing seriously in my early twenties, I was reading books by James Baldwin, Sandra Cisneros, Edward P. Jones, and Katherine Anne Porter, and many, many others. I saw how these authors shined the spotlight on their people and I also wanted to write work that was incredibly sophisticated that honored my cultural group, making us more visible in the mainstream. – from the Pen America interview

Fajardo-Anstine brings a lot of her family’s history into this novel. Her great-aunt’s name is Lucy Lucero. In addition to the name of our protagonist, a second connection can be found in the name of the stream where Pidre is found, Lucero. An uncle was a snake charmer. An aunt worked in a Denver glass factory, as Luz’s aunt works in a mirror factory in the book. Her family had hidden from KKK, as characters do here. Her Belgian coal-miner father abandoned his family, as Luz and Diego’s father does here.

There is a feel to the book of family stories being told around a table, or in a living room, by elders, passing on what they know to those most recently arrived. Remember these tales, the speaker might say, and in doing so remember where you came from, so you can better know who your people are and ultimately who you are.

As they hopped and skipped in and out of the archway lights, Luz imagined she was jumping between times. She saw herself as a little girl in the Lost Territory with her mother and father walking through snow fields, carrying fresh laundry to the company cabin. Then she saw herself in Hornet Moon with Maria Josie, beside the window to her new city, those few photographs of her parents scattered about the floor, the only remnants of them she had left. She saw herself eating Cream of Wheat for breakfast with Diego in the white-walled kitchen. They were listening to the radio, the summertime heat blowing in from the windows, the mountains far away behind the screen.

The racism that Luz and other confront is not subtle. A public park features a sign

NOTICE
This Park Belongs to WHITE PROTESTANTS
NO GOOKS
SPICS
NIGGERS
Allowed

Luz is denied an opportunity to apply for a job because she is not white. A KKK march has a very pogrom-like, 1921-Tulsa-like feel.

Luz gets a chance to see the range of crimes going on in the city, when she gets a particular job. Sees how the system that is supposed to protect regular folks does anything but. The murder of a Hispanic activist by the police is not just a historical image, but a resonant reminder of police killing of civilians in today’s world, usually with little accountability. The more things change…

There is a magical element in this novel, that, when combined with the multi-generational structure, and richness of language, and, of course, her focus on particular groups of people, makes one think of Louise Erdrich. As to the first, among others, Luz receives visions while reading tea leaves, and at other times as well. An ancestor speaks with the dead. A saintly personage associated with mortality appears in the flesh. People appear who may or may not be physically present.

The ancestry begins with Pidre in 1868, but in his infancy we meet elders who reach back much further.

The generation I knew in real life was born around 1912 and 1918. They would talk about the generation before—their parents, but also their grandparents. That meant I had firsthand knowledge spanning almost two hundred years. When I sat down to think about the novel and the world I was creating, I realized how far back in time I was able to touch just based on the oral tradition. My ancestors went from living a rural lifestyle—moving from town to town in mining camps, and before that living on pueblos and in villages—to being in the city, all within one generation. I found it fascinating that my great-grandma could have grown up with a dirt floor, not going to school, not being literate, and have a son graduate with his master’s degree from Colorado State University. To me, time was like space travel, and so when I decided on the confines of the novel, I knew it had to be the 1860s to 1930s. – from the Catapult interview

Luz is an appealing lead, smart, ambitious, mostly honorable, while beset by the slings and arrows of ethnic discrimination. Like Austen women, she is faced with a world in which, because of her class and ethnicity, making her own way in the world would be very tough without a husband. And, of course, the whole husband thing comes with its own baggage. Of course, the heart wants what it wants and she faces some challenges in how to handle what the world offers her. She does not always make the best choices, a flaw likely to endear her to readers even more than an antiseptic perfection might.

The supporting cast is dazzling, particularly for a book of very modest length (336p hardcover). From a kick-ass 19th century woman sharpshooter, to a civil rights lawyer with conflicting ambitions, from a gay mother-figure charged with raising children not her own to a successful Greek businessman, from Luz’s bff cuz to the men the two teens are drawn to, from an ancient seer to a corrupt politician, from…to…from…to… Fajardo-Astine gives us memorable characters, with color, texture, motivations, edges you can grab onto, elements to remember. It is an impressive group.

And the writing is beautiful. This is the opening:

The night Fertudez Marisol Ortiz rode on horseback to the northern pueblo Pardona, a secluded and modest village, the sky was so filled with stars it seemed they hummed. Thinking this good luck, Fertudez didn’t cry as she left her newborn on the banks of an arroyo, turkey down wrapped around his body, a bear claw fastened to his chest.
“Remember your line,” she whispered, before she mounted her horse and galloped away.
In Pardona, Land of Early Sky, the elder Desiderya Lopez dreamt of stories in her sleep. The fireplace glowed in her clay home as she whistled snores through dirt walls, her breath dissipating into frozen night. She would have slept soundly until daybreak, but the old woman was pulled awake by the sounds of plodding hooves and chirping crickets, the crackling of burnt cedar, an interruption between dawn and day.

Really, after reading that, ya just have to keep on. One of the great strengths of this novel is its powerful use of imagery. There are many references to light, as one would expect. Water figures large, from Pidre’s introduction in the prologue, left by a stream, to our introduction to Luz and her aunt Maria Josie sitting together in Denver, near the banks where the creek and the river met, the city’s liquid center…, to a rescue from a flash flood, to an unborn buried near a river, and more. A bear-claw links generations. This makes for a very rich reading experience.

I felt that the narrative fizzled toward the end, as if, having accomplished the goal of presenting a family and group history, filling a vacuum, there was less need to tidy everything up, a quibble, given that the novel accomplishes its larger aims.

Kaji Fajardo-Astine’s 2019 short-story collection, Sabrina & Corina, made the finals for National Book Award consideration. You do not need to read tea leaves or have visions to see what lies ahead. Woman of Light, a first novel, illuminates that future quite clearly. By focusing a beacon on an under-told tale, Kaji Fajardo-Astine, is certain to have a brilliant career as one of our best novelists.

Celia, Estevan’s sister. Luz listened and watched as she read her own words in her own voice. First in Spanish and then in English. The crowd moved with each syllable, cries of anguish. A lamp unto my feet, a woman yelled behind Luz. A light unto my path.

Review posted – June 17, 2022

Publication date – June 7, 2022

I received a digital ARE of Woman of Light from One World in return for a fair review. Thanks, folks, and thanks to NetGalley for facilitating.

This review has been cross-posted on GoodReads

=======================================EXTRA STUFF

Links to the author’s personal, Instagram, and Twitter pages

Interviews
—–Red – June, 2022 – Q&A: Kali Fajardo-Anstine’s “Woman of Light” with Cory Phare
—–Pen America – 2019 – THE POWER OF STORYTELLING: A PEN TEN INTERVIEW WITH KALI FAJARDO-ANSTINE with Lily Philpott – not specific to this novel, but interesting
—–Catapult – June, 2022 – Kali Fajardo-Anstine Believes Memory Is an Act of Resistance with Jared Jackson

Items of Interest
—–Following the Manito Trail
—–5280 – Inside Denver Author Kali Fajardo-Anstine’s Much Anticipated Debut Novel by Shane Monahan

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May 6, 2022 · 12:01 am

The Mad Girls of New York by Maya Rodale

book cover

God save Nellie from the ladies’ pages. If a woman was lucky enough to get a job working for a paper—which spared her from working in a factory, or as a domestic or a wife (shudder)—she would have to spend her days writing about household hints and recipes, garden shows and charity luncheons. It was mind-numbingly tedious and she wanted to avoid it at all costs. It was one reason why she had left Pittsburgh.

There is nothing worse than being told that you don’t know your own mind or body. If you aren’t mad when you go in, chances are you will be by the time you come out.

When twenty-three-year-old Nellie Bly headed to New York City in 1887, she left a message for her boss at The Pittsburgh Gazette.

I’m off for New York. Look out for me.
—Nellie Bly

Good advice. It was no easy task for Elizabeth (Elly) Jane Cochrane. Women in journalism were relegated to the “ladies’ page” when they were hired at all. And often had to use pen names to get their work into print. Persistence paid off, though, and Cochrane finally got a gig with The New York World, by promising to go undercover at the New York City Asylum for the Insane on Blackwell’s Island. (called Roosevelt Island today). The notorious institution had already been the subject of multiple journalistic examinations. But it was a tough place to get into, and, as it had changed from a co-ed institution to a women’s asylum in 1872, it would take a female to be able to get inside, one of the downsides to journalism being such a boys’ club. But Nellie’s self-confidence, and courage, knew no bounds, so she dove right in.

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Maya Rodale – image from Open Shelf – photo by Elsa Ngan

The Mad Girls of New York is a novelization of Bly’s actual early adventures in NYC. Some of the characters are taken from Bly’s seminal work, Ten Days in an Asylum, which was comprised of and expanded from the articles she had written for the New York World, a series that made her reputation. She persuaded those who needed persuading that she was mad, in order to be institutionalized as a patient. It was surprisingly easy. Once in, she experienced the horrors inflicted on the patients, although inmates would have been more accurate.

The asylum was a physically cold place, and the residents were provided with painfully inadequate clothing and covers. The food was unspeakable, often insect-ridden, the physical accommodations spartan, the doctors dismissive, the nurses abusive, and the cleanliness regimen was cruel. It did not help that some of the help was recruited from the prison that was also on the island.

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Nellie Bly – image from the Irish Times

We meet several groups of characters. The journalism pack leads off. This includes the editors she interviews during a project on why the papers do not hire women. There is a fair bit of LOL to be had in this as she leaves them spinning and sputtering in their own contradictions. There are the other women journalists with whom she engages, a club of sorts, who help each other out, getting together in an establishment, The Ordinary, that serves women only. Such institutions did exist at the time. She has a competition going with a male reporter, Sam Colton, from Chicago. There is also a simmering attraction between the two, but it is not romancy enough to intrude into the story too much, thankfully. There is also a flirtation with the hunky, single mayor.

When you learn that there was in fact a hot bachelor mayor of New York City named Hugh Grant, you must include it in your novel. – from Rodale’s Twitter feed

Rodale has produced numerous romance novels, (22 by my count, plus some novellas, a children‘s book and a couple of non-fics) so it would have been a shock if there were not some sparks flying in this tale. But if you are hoping for ignition into conflagration, you will have to check out her considerable romance work instead.

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The New York City Asylum for the Insane – image from Wikipedia – cheery-looking, no?

Then there are the patients. Anne is in need of care, but cannot afford decent treatment at a private institution. The Princess has a regal bearing but will only say three words, Rose, Daisy, and Violet, over and over. Tillie has a nervous condition, truly needs some rest, some peace and quiet, in a warm place, but her friends dumped her off at Bellevue (with friends like that…). Prayer Girl, who pleads with god to kill her ASAP, somehow never takes the initiative herself. Women are committed to this place for a variety of reasons, few of them good. Many devolve to a broad category of their being inconvenient, something Martha Mitchell might recognize. Then there is Mrs Grady, the Nurse Ratched of this enterprise, a cruel overseer, super control freak, eager to inflict pain and punishment and never willing to hear any of the real concerns of her charges. Toss in a few cruel cops and attendants, a clueless doctor, and another who at least shows some bits of humanity.

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Newspaper Row in Lower Manhattan. That is City Hall in the foreground on the left. The domed building to the east of City Hall is the New York World Building. The Brooklyn Bridge had not yet been built when this shot was taken, but if it had, it would appear to the north (left) of the World Bldg) – image from Stuff Nobody Cares About

Rodale’s focus is on how women were treated, not just in this horrid institution, but in all institutions of the wider world, using her story-telling skills to show us how women were regarded as a lesser life form, in politics, in journalism, in finance, in the overall world of work, well…paid work. Slaving at home for hubby and progeny was still just fine and dandy. She shows the struggles that smart, driven women had to endure in order to access the same level of opportunity and respect as men, just to be able to cover hard news. Bly was one of a group of women called “Girl Stunt Reporters,” daring women journalists who put themselves in peril in order to delve into many of the social wrongs of the late 19th century.

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Hugh J. Grant two-term NYC Mayor – image from Wikipedia

Rodale spices up the story, as if it needed additional condiments, with a mystery about a high-society spouse gone strangely missing, with the widower chomping at the bit to wed a younger, richer, woman. She incorporates actual historical events and people into the tale, sometimes with name changes, sometimes with tweaking of timelines. Some personages retain their names, including the aforementioned mayor, Hugh Grant, (who did not actually become mayor until 1889, two years after the events of this novel) Hetty Green (The Witch of Wall Street), Harriet Hubbard Ayer, a writer of articles about beauty and health for the New York World, and others.

Despite the harshness of the conditions Bly, and now Rodale, reveal, there is no graphic violence or sexual behavior in The Mad Girls of New York. This helps make it perfectly suitable for younger readers, particularly girls, who may not know about Nellie, and what a pioneer she was. It is a very fluid, quick read.

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Hetty Green – The Witch of Wall Street – image from wiki

The book is listed as A Nellie Bly Novel #1, so we can presume there are more in the works. I do not have any inside intel on this, but I imagine that Nellie’s around-the-world-in-80-days challenge (she did it in 72) will be among the upcomings. Something to look forward to.

Nellie’s story is a remarkable one. Rodale has done a very nice job of letting modern readers in on what Nellie faced as a gutsy, newbie reporter in New York, and what she accomplished, at least in the short term, encouraging us to learn more about this brilliant, dogged, remarkable woman. You’d have to be crazy to pass this one by.

The madhouse had been horrible, but this part—writing it all down with the promise of seeing the atrocities in print, made it feel worthwhile. When she thought of the public reading her words and knowing about the suffering that happened at Blackwell’s, Nellie felt shivers. Do stunts, Marian had flippantly suggested. But Nellie had found her life’s work.

Review posted – May 6, 2022

Publication date – April 26, 2022

I received an ARE of The Mad Girls of New York from Berkley in return for a fair review. Thanks, folks, and thanks to NetGalley for facilitating. Can I get a warmer blanket, please?

This review has been cross-posted Goodreads.

=======================================EXTRA STUFF

Links to the author’s personal, Instagram, and Twitter pages

Interview
—–Wine, Women and Words – Nerding out about Nellie with Maya Rodale with Michelle Leivas and Diana Giovinazzo

Item of Interest from the author
—–Lithub – The Real-Life Heroines of an Outrageous Era: A Gilded Age Reading List

My obsession with the Gilded Age began with romance novels—I wanted to set a series in old New York in the world of Mrs. Astor’s ballroom and dollar Princesses, which felt like an updated version of the Regency Era. But in researching the time period I discovered that the best stories weren’t just uptown in Fifth Avenue mansions—they were everywhere. I also discovered that the Gilded Age was a golden age for independent, ambitious, boundary breaking real life heroines.
One of my favorites is Nellie Bly…She was the first and most daring of the stunt girl reporters, who found fame and success by going undercover to report stories that detailed women’s experiences as factory girls, or getting abortions, or learning ballet.

Items of Interest
—–Wiki on Nellie Bly
—–Wiki on Hugh J. Grant – NYC’s 88th mayor
—–Wiki on Hetty Green – “The Witch of Wall Street” – Marian goes to see her to get intel on Jay Wallace in chapter 24
—–Wiki on – Harriet Ayer – Nellie’s mentor in the book
—–Library of Congress – Research Guide for Nellie Bly
—–Gutenberg – Ten Days in a Madhouse – the full text
—–Wiki on The Martha Mitchell effect
—–Smithsonian – These Women Reporters Went Undercover to Get the Most Important Scoops of Their Day – an outstanding piece by Kim Todd, author of Sensational: The Hidden History of America’s “Girl Stunt Reporters
—–Wiki on The Ladies Ordinary – a women-only establishment where Nellie meets with other reporters
—–For a real blow to your consciousness, check out this site, for Octagon NYC. This part of the original asylum has been converted, as all things in NYC are, into luxury housing. The prices are insane. (a 540 sq ft studio is $3,028 a month, a 3 BR, 1,316 sq ft goes for $7500 a month)
—–The American Journal of Psychiatry has a brief, but informative, piece – The Lunatic Asylum on Blackwell’s Island and the New York Press

Reminds Me Of
—–Leslie Parry’s 2015 novel, Church of Marvels, includes a look at Blackwell’s when one of the characters spends some time inside.
—–One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest – the film

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April 27, 2018 · 12:01 am

Circe by Madeline Miller

book cover
Men, can’t live with ‘em, can’t turn ‘em all into swine.

What do you mean turn them into swine? From her earliest application of her new found transformative skills it is suggested that what Circe turns her unfortunate guests into has more to do with their innermost nature than Circe’s selection of a target form. (The strength of those flowers lay in their sap, which could transform any creature to its truest self.) Clearly her sty residents had an oinky predisposition. And I am sure that there are many who had started the transformation long before landing on her island.

Whaddya call the large sty Circe filled with erstwhile men? A good start.

Ok. You had to know this would be part of the deal for this review. So, now that I have gotten it out of my system, (it is out, right?) we can proceed.

When I was born, the name for what I was did not exist.

It was a word that Barbara Bush might have had in mind when she described Geraldine Ferraro, her husband’s opponent for the Vice Presidency, in 1984. “”I can’t say it, but it rhymes with ‘rich,'” she said, later insisting that the word in question did not begin with a “b,” but a “w.” Sure, whatever. But in this case, I suppose both might apply. Circe is indeed the first witch in western literature. And many a sailing crew might have had unkind things to say about her.

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Madeline Miller – image from The Times

Our primary introduction to Circe (which we pronounce as Sir-Sea, and even Miller goes along with this, so people don’t throw things at her. But for how it might be pronounced in Greek, you know, the proper way, you might check out this link. Put that down, there will be no throwing of things in this review!) was that wondrous classic of Western literature, The Odyssey. Given how many times this and its companion volume, The Iliad, have been reworked through the ages, it is no surprise that there have been many variations on the stories they told. Circe’s story has seen its share of re-imaginings as well. But Miller tries to stick fairly close to the Homeric version. Be warned, though, some license was taken, and other sources inspired the work as well. But it is from Homer that we get the primary association we have with her name, the magical transmutation of men into pigs.

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George Romney’s 1782 portrait of Emma Hamilton as Circe – image from wikipedia

We follow the life of our Ur-witch from birth to whatever. She did not start out with much by way of godly powers. Her mother, Perse, daughter of the sea-god Oceanos, was a nymph, and her father was Helios, the sun god. Despite the lofty position of Pop’s place in things, Circe was just a nymph, on the low end of the godly powers scale. This did not help in the family to which she had been born. Not one of her parents’ favorites, she was blessed with neither power nor beauty, had a very ungod-like human-level voice, and her sibs were not exactly the nicest. Kinda tough to keep up when daddy is the actual bloody sun.

Years pass, and one day she comes across a mortal fisherman. He seems pretty nice, someone she can talk to. She’d like to take it to the next stage, so she lays low, listens in on family gatherings, and picks up intel on substances that might be used to effect powerful and advantageous changes. She asks her grandmother, Tethys, (very Lannisterish wife AND SISTER to Oceanos) to transform him into a god for her, but Granny throws her out, alarmed when her granddaughter mentions this pharmakos stuff she had been looking into. Left to her own devices she tries this out on her bf, making him into his truest self. It does not end the way she’d hoped. (Pearls before you-know-what.) Not the last bad experience she would have with a man.

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Levy’s 1889 Circe – image from wikipedia (is that a foot soldier?)

Her relationships with men are actually not all bad. Daddy is singularly unfeeling, and can be pretty dim for such a bright bulb, and her brothers are far less than wonderful, but there is some good in her sibling connections as well. She has a warm interaction with a titan, Prometheus, which is a net positive. Later, she has an interesting relationship with Hermes, who is not to be trusted, but who offers some helpful guidance. And then there are the mortals, Daedalus (the master artist, the Michelangelo, the Leonardo da Vinci of his era), Jason, of Argonaut fame, Odysseus, who you may have heard of, and more. There were dark encounters as well, and thus the whole turning-men-into-pigs thing.

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Brewer’s 1892 Circe and Her Swine – image from Wikipedia

Miller has had a passion for the classics since she was eight, when her mother read her the Iliad and began taking her to Egyptian and Greek exhibits at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. It made her a nerdy classmate but was a boon when she got to college and was able to find peers who shared her love of the ancient tales. It was this passion that led her to write her first novel, The Song of Achilles, a reimagining of Achilles relationship with his lover, Patroclus, a delight of a book, a Times bestseller, and winner of the Orange prize. It took her ten years to write her first novel, about seven for this one and the gestation period for number three remains to be seen. She is weighing whether to base it on Shakespeare’s The Tempest or Virgil’s Aeneid. If past is portent, it will be the latter, and should be ready by about 2025.

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Ulysses and Circe, Angelica Kauffmann, 1786. – image from Miller’s site

The central, driving force in the story is Circe becoming her fullest possible self. (I suppose one might say she made a silk purse from a sow’s ear. I wouldn’t, but some might.)

This is the story of a woman finding her power and, as part of that, finding her voice. She starts out really unable to say what she thinks and by the end of the book, she’s able to live life on her terms and say what she thinks and what she feels. – from the Bookriot interview

Most gods are awful sorts, vain, selfish, greedy, careless of the harm they do to others. Circe actually has better inclinations. For instance, when Prometheus is being tortured by the titans for the crime of giving fire to humans, Circe alone is kind to him, bringing him nectar, and talking with him when no one else offers him anything but anger and scorn. She is curious about mortals, and asks him about them, going so far as to cut herself to experience a bit of humanity.

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Carracci’s c. 1590 Ulysses and Circe in the Farnese Palace – image from Wikipedia

Livestock comes in for some attention outside the sty. Turns out Circe’s father has a thing for a well-turned fetlock, so maybe she comes by her affinity for animals of all sorts, albeit in a very different way, quite naturally. Her island is rich with diverse fauna, including some close companions most of us would flee. An early version of Doctor Doolittle?

Scholars have debated whether Circe’s pet lions are supposed to be transformed men, or merely tamed beasts. In my novel, I chose to make them actual animals, because I wanted to honor Circe’s connection to Eastern and Anatolian goddesses like Cybele. Such goddesses also had power over fierce animals, and are known by the title Potnia Theron, Mistress of the Beasts.

Not be confused with The Beastmaster

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Circe and Odysseus. Allessandro Allori, 1560 – image from Miller’s site

While she has her darker side (she does change her nymph love-rival Scylla into a beast of epic proportions, which gets her sent to her room, or in this case, island, and there is that pig thing again) she is also a welcoming hostess on her isle of exile, Aiaia. (Which sounds to me like the palindromic beginning of a lament, Aiaiaiaiaiaiaia, which might feel a bit more familiar with a minor transformation, to oy-oy-oy-oy-oy-oy-oy-oy). I mean, she runs a pretty nifty BnB, with free-roaming wild animals, of both the barnyard and terrifying sort, a steady flow of wayward nymphs sent there by desperate parents in hopes that Circe might transform them into less troublesome progeny, a table with a seemingly bottomless supply of food and drink. And she is more than willing to offer special services to world-class mortals, among others. I mean, after that little misunderstanding with Odysseus about his men, (Pigs? What pigs? What could you possibly mean? Oh, you mean those pigs. Oopsy. How careless of me.) she not only invites everyone to stay for a prolonged vacay, but shacks up with the peripatetic one, offers him instructions on reaching the underworld, suggests ways to get past Scylla and Charybdis, and probably packs bag lunches for him and his crew. She is not all bad.

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Barker’s 1889 Circe – image from Wikipedia

Circe struggles with the mortals-vs-immortals tension. Her mortal voice makes her less frightening to the short-lived ones, allowing her to establish actual relationships with them that a more boombox-voice-level deity might not be able to manage. Of course, it is still quite limiting that even the youngest of her mortal love interests would wither and die while she remained the same age pretty much forever. Knowing that you will see any man you love die is a definite limiting factor. Yet, she manages. She certainly recognizes what a psycho crew the immortals are, even her immediate family, and respects that mortals who gain fame do so by the sweat of their brow or extreme cunning, (even if it is to dark purpose) not their questionable godly DNA. Reinforcing this is her front row seat to the real-housewives tension between the erstwhile global rulers, the Titans, and the relatively new champions of everything there is, the Olympians. I mean, perpetual torture, thunderbolts, ongoing seditious plots, the nurturing of monsters, wholesale slaughter of mortals? She knows a thing or two, because she’s seen a thing or two.

My thoughts about [Circe as caregiver] really start with the gods, who in Greek myth are horrendous creatures. Selfish, totally invested only in their own desires, and unable to really care for anyone but themselves. Circe has this impulse from the beginning to care for other people. She has this initial encounter with Prometheus where she comes across another god who seems to understand that and also who triggers that impulse in her. I wanted to write about what it’s like when you to want to try to be a good person, but you have absolutely no models for that. How do you construct a moral view coming from a completely immoral family? – from Bookriot interview

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Circe Offering the Cup to Odysseus – by John William Waterhouse – 1891 – image from Wikimedia

Of course, there is a pretty straight line between the sort of MCP hogwash Circe had to endure in the wayback and recent events that have been getting so much attention of late

“I wasn’t trying to write Circe’s story in a modern way… I was just trying to be true to her experience in the ancient world.”
“It was a very eerie experience. I would put the book away and check the news. The top story was literally the same issue I had just been writing about — sexual assault, abuse, men refusing to allow women to have any power … I was drawn to the mystery of her character — why is she turning men into pigs?” – from The Times interview

There are plenty of classical connections peppered throughout Circe’s tale. Jason and Medea (niece) pop by for a spell. She is summoned to assist in the birthing of the minotaur (nephew) to her seriously nasty sister. She is part of Scylla’s origin story, interacts with Prometheus (cousin), gives shit to Athena, even heads into the briny deep to take a meeting with a huge sea creature (no, not the Kraaken). Hangs with Penelope (her bf’s wife) and Telemachus (bf’s son), and spends a lot of time with Hermes. She definitely had a life, many even, particularly for someone who was ostracized to live on an island.

For Circe, I would say the Odyssey was my primary touch-stone in the sense that that’s where I started building the character. I take character clues directly from Homer’s text, both large and small. I mentioned her mortal-like voice. The lions. The pigs. And then when I get to the Odysseus episode in the book, I follow Homer obviously very closely… – from the BookRiot interview

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“Circea”, #38 in Boccaccio’s c. 1365 De Claris Mulieribus, a catalogue of famous women, from a 1474 edition – image from wikipedia

In terms of sources, I used texts from all over the ancient world and a few from the more modern world as well. For Circe herself, I drew inspiration from Ovid’s Metamorphoses and Apollonius of Rhodes’ Argonautica, Vergil’s Aeneid, the lost epic Telegony (which survives only in summary) and myths of the Anatolian goddess Cybele. For other characters, I was inspired by the Iliad, of course, the tragedies (specifically the Oresteia, Medea and Philoctetes), Vergil’s Aeneid again, Tennyson’s Ulysses and Shakespeare’s Troilus and Cressida. Alert readers may note a few small pieces of Shakespeare’s Ulysses in my Odysseus! – from Refinery29 interview

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Circe – by Lorenzo Garbieri – image From Maicar Greek Mythology Link

Madeline Miller’s Circe is not a lovelorn, lonely heart desperate for connection in her isolation, but a multi-faceted character (not actually a human being, though), with inner seams of the dark and light sort, with family issues that might seem familiar in feel, if not in external content, with sins on her soul, but a desire to do good, and with a curiosity about the world. She may not have been the brightest light in the house of Helios, but she glowed with an inner strength, a capacity for mercy, an appreciation for genius, beauty and talent, and a fondness for pork. This is the epic story of a life lived to the fullest. Circe is an explorer, a lover, a destroyer, and can be a very angry goddess. This transformative figure is our doorway to a very accessible look at the Greek tales which lie at the root of so much of our culture. If you have a decent grounding in western mythology this will offer a delightful refresher. If you do not, it can offer a delightful introduction, and will no doubt spark a desire to root about for more. Madeline Miller may not have a wand with special powers, or transmogrifying potions at her command, but she demonstrates here a power to transform mere readers into fans. Circe is a fabulous read! You will go hog wild for it. Can you pass the hot dogs? That’s All Folks

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The Sorceress Circe, oil painting by Dosso Dossi, c. 1530; in the Borghese Gallery, RomeSCALA/Art Resource, New York – image from Britannica

Review first posted – 4/27/2018

Publication date – 4/10/2018

December 2018 – Circe wins the 2018 Goodreads Choice Award for favorite Fantasy novel of the year

This review has been cross-posted on Goodreads. Stop by and say Hi!

=======================================EXTRA STUFF

Links to the author’s personal, Twitter and FB pages

Interviews
—– BookPage – April 10, 2018 – Madeline Miller – The season of the witch – by Trisha Ping
—–Bookriot – April 19, 2018 – Writing of Gods and Mortals: A Madeline Miller Interview – by Nikki Vanry
—–The Times – April 5, 2018 – The Magazine Interview: Madeline Miller, author of this summer’s must-read novel, Circe, on seeing history through women’s eyes – by Helena de Bertodano

NY Times – April 6, 2018 – A lovely profile from the NY Times – Circe, a Vilified Witch From Classical Mythology, Gets Her Own Epic – by Alexandra Alter

My review of The Song of Achilles

The Odyssey on Gutenberg

A very nifty, brief, and entertaining summary of The Odyssey can be found on Schmoop.com.

A fitting piece of music from Studio Killers

Reading Group Guide from Catapult

==========================================STUFFING

A wonderful piece from Allan Ishac at Medium, on the Russia investigation. – Mueller Tells Staff: “This Swine Is Mine”

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President Trump is ready for slaughter, according to people inside Robert Mueller’s office. (Credit: wemeantwell.com and imgur.com) – from above article. (turned out Mueller was hamstrung in what he could investigate, among other issues)

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