TBT Review: Lost in Translation by Nicole Mones

Throw Back Thursday

This review of Lost in Translation by Nicole Mones was first posted on April 2, 2008.

Mones is the author of several novels set in China, most recently Night in Shanghai, about African-American jazz musicians leading Shanghai's pre-WWII jazz scene.

No, not the Scarlett Johansson movie. This Lost in Translation is an imaginative and satisfying novel by Nicole Mones. The protagonist, Alice Mannegan, is an American living in China, working as an interpreter, and striving to be accepted in the culture she has adopted. When hired by a second-rate American anthropologist, the two hook up with his Chinese counterparts and head to Inner Mongolia looking for the lost remains of Peking Man.

Mones does a great job of weaving the histories of the characters into the main story. While the team follows the trail of homo erectus, Alice struggles to understand her relationship with her powerful father; her boss worries about losing his son’s affection and respect; and their Chinese cohort searches on the sly for the wife he cannot abandon although she disappeared to a work camp during the Cultural Revolution. Mones uses the historic relationship between French priest Pierre Teilhard de Chardin and his platonic lover, Lucile Swan, to bring thematic unity to the varied storylines.

Equal parts historical mystery, foreign adventure, and cross-cultural romance, Lost in Translation has a lot to offer.

TBT: Review: How to Find Morels

Throw Back Thursday

This review of How to Find Morels by Milan Pelouch, was first posted on March 29, 2008. I chose to repost it now because I've recently recommended this book to several people thinking of going morel mushroom hunting and because I love the enthusiasm in this little book. It will inspire anyone to dive into a hobby.  

Milan Pelouch is a 78 year old mushroom hunter who, in his charming guide, How to Find Morels (subtitled Even as Others are Coming Back Empty Handed) teaches how to identify and locate his favorite morels.

This slim volume is packed with practical information such as photographs identifying “true” and “false” morels, when to expect morels in different regions, and how to locate elusive morels by finding specific types of trees on which the mushrooms thrive. It is also full of folksy advice like the best way to carry morels while hunting (in a cloth bag) and the best way to store them (sauté in butter and freeze in plastic bags). He even includes several of his wife’s best morel recipes.

The book is a refreshing exhortation to enjoy the healthy, educational, and tasty pastime of mushroom hunting. Even for an armchair forager, How to Find Morels is a delight. As Pelouch says, “In less than an hour you can gain the needed know-how and will be flashing a big smile on the way home from a successful hunt instead of stewing in frustration after being skunked once again.” You can’t beat that!

TBT: Review: The Bone People by Keri Hulme

Throw Back Thursday

This review of The Bone People, the 1985 Booker Prize winner by Keri Hulme, was first posted on October 4, 2008.

The Bone People by Keri Hulme is a difficult book about identity, love, and belonging. Hulme tells the story of three tough-as-nails characters: Kerewin, an isolated artist who can no longer paint; Joe, a Maori workman struggling to raise his adopted son alone; and Simon, the mute little boy Joe found washed up on the seashore.

The style is difficult because the point of view switches around among the three main characters without warning; Hulme uses Joycean made-up words as well as Maori words; and it is hard to tell when the adults are speaking their own words or thinking out loud what they think the mute little Simon is trying to communicate.

The story is difficult because of the child abuse at the center of the plot. The ambivalence with which Hulme treats the topic makes the story incredibly interesting, but absolutely distressing.

The characters are difficult because none of them are likable. Simon is sympathetic, for sure. But even he has his moments of maliciousness, although these are less convincing than Hulme may have intended. Joe, on the other hand, does not deserve the sympathy Hulme seems to want the reader to give him. Yes, he gets his comeuppance in the end, but it does not seem sufficient punishment. His role is key to the story because he is the hinge between Simon and Kerewin, but the ultimate resolution seems a little unrealistic, given the prior conflict.

Kerwin is particularly prickly and seething with anger. She is quick to lash out verbally, and if angry enough or drunk enough, physically. She has cut herself off from her family and her community, preferring to live in an isolated tower by the ocean. She has even isolated herself from her own sex, considering herself to be a third gender – a “neuter.” But Kerwin’s story makes the book worth reading. She is one of the most complex and intriguing characters in contemporary literature.

TBT: Review: The Stories of John Cheever

Throw Back Thursday

This review was first posted on March 24, 2008

Before there was Mad Men, there was John Cheever.

The Stories of John Cheever, which won the National Book Critics Circle award in 1978 and the Pulitzer in 1979, is a chronological collection that spans Cheever’s short story career, from pre-WWII up to 1973. To read this collection – just shy of 700 pages – is to live in Cheever’s head, tracking his artistic and personal development in a way that a single novel or volume of stories doesn’t allow.

These are not happy stories. The earlier pieces are particularly bleak and raw. While the later stories are deeper and more nuanced, they are still pretty dark. Precious few have cheerful resolutions. The best Cheever’s characters seem to achieve is contentment despite imperfect circumstances.

Cheever’s is a world of commuter trains and cocktail parties, where everyone wears hats, has a cook, drinks martinis at lunch, summers, sails, and commits adultery. Not everyone is rich; in fact, money problems are a continuing theme. But the trappings, however tarnished, of a mid-century, Northeast corridor, upper crust way of life hang on all the stories. And that is Cheever at his best. He can bring us so deep into that world that it feels like living it.