30 Dec
Even though the look
it returns is judgmental,
keen to name our faults,
at seventeen, one’s mirrored
image commands attention
Now, these decades on,
even though no one has taught
us how to look at
a mirror without seeing,
time has perfected such an act
29 Dec
Published in 1948, Graham Greene’s novel The Heart of the Matter is set in British West Africa in the early days of World War II. It is there we meet the book’s main character, colonial police chief Major Henry Scobie, a pious Catholic who, because of his faith, has a reputation for honesty and incorruptibility. And while he feels himself trapped in a loveless marriage, he feels a strong responsibility to remain faithful to his wedding vow.
His wife has long been unhappy living in their remote African backwater. This unhappiness bubbles over into anger when Scobie is passed over for promotion, and she begins to constantly nag that she needs to get away. Even though such a trip is beyond what they can afford, he promises her that he will come up with the funds. This leads him to go against his principles and secure a loan from a black marketer living in the community. This act will set off a cascade of events that eventually lead him into adultery, blackmail, and a murder that he feels responsible for.
This novel is about a righteous man’s fall from grace, as the mortal sins in life accumulate into a weight he can no longer bear. It vividly captures a man haunted by religious doctrine, and yet unable to turn his back on either his new found lover or his wife upon her return. This leads him to try to find an escape that will cause pain to neither, even if it means sacrificing his own soul. The religious overtones that dominate this novel raise more questions than they answer. But thanks to Greene’s revealing prose, rich with precise period detail, it is a work that will capture readers’ interest for generations to come.
20 Dec
Richard Thompson is not a household name in today’s musical scene, although this memoir of his early career suggests he should be. In this account of his time as a founding member of the groundbreaking group Fairport Convention and of his early solo career, his description captures the ethos of the period. The focus here is not so much on his personal life but on his interactions with the key figures who made this period a fertile ground that has continued to influence musicians decades on.
How Fairport Convention came together with Sandy Denny as their lead singer, and how they found their unique musical sound, is fully presented. It is a band that had to overcome early tragedy when a roadie driving their van fell asleep at the wheel and crashed the vehicle. The accident killed their drummer and Thompson’s girlfriend at the time. Despite this, the band regrouped and over the next few years released a number of albums which, while never huge hits, proved influential to countless musicians to this day. The same can be said for the songs Thompson wrote, first for the group and then for his solo career.
Thompson’s observations will provide delightful insights. His wry observations and attention to detail will engage those interested in the birth of Britain’s folk rock scene and Richard’s involvement in it and beyond. While many groups have come and gone following in Thompson’s footsteps, his influence persists. Today, a current generation mines his songwriting tropes, even if they are unaware of Thompson and Fairport Convention’s importance to the genre.
20 Dec
Untraceable, published in 2019, is an intellectual thriller that lacks a hero as its centerpiece. Instead, its main character is Kalitin, an aging Russian chemist, now dying of cancer, who defected to the West when the Soviet Union collapsed. But before that, he spent decades passionately working to create a neurotoxin that would prove to be an untraceable poison. When he finally succeeded, he named it Neophyte. Kalitin was not politically motivated to conjure such a substance, but rather, was driven to do so because of his love of Science. For him, moral concerns are beside the point. What the substance might later be used for does not bother him in the least.
The novel’s other main character is Shershnev, a Russian special force operative who, decades after the defection, has been sent to kill Kalitin using his own poison against him. Unlike the chemist who is untroubled by his past, Shershnev is haunted by his actions during the Chechen War where he took part in torture of the insurgents. Despite this, he does not question the order to kill the defector. The third party in the story is a priest who in his youth collaborated with the Germans and Russians to create poisons that were later used by the Nazis to carry out their attempts to exterminate the Jews. In an ironic twist, an accident with an earlier predecessor of Neophyte poisoned and disfigured him.
Lebedev, a Russian author, is to be commended for tackling a subject that dares to reveal what is taking place in Putin’s Russia today, where the use of such poisons has become a tool to eliminate those opposing his regime. While an interesting read, its lack of a character to root for makes the story something that engages the intellect, but fails to touch the heart. For those expecting the usual espionage thriller, this novel will disappoint. For those interested in the human complexity of morality, this novel will intrigue.
20 Dec
The ground beneath our feet
hardened into iron,
today’s wind a saw with teeth.
Mid-afternoon light already
strained and steeped
to the consistency of dusk.
Outside, in the cold sterile air
breath exhaled
quickly solidifies on eyewear.
A season on, summer’s palette
has been stripped of
most colors and their scents.
Yet on the windowsill, hope
persists in an African
violet’s cupped green hands.
Its purple blooms defiant still.
13 Dec
In this game
played only once,
the sandbox
becomes a tabletop.
Straws are drawn
to decide the roles of
Mother and Father.
We dine on
grass, with mud pies
for dessert.
Children feign
hunger, pantomime
consumption.
Father complains
we are chewing with
our mouths open.
When the plates
aren’t polished clean,
Mother cries.
As spoons race
to assuage her tears,
mime is forgotten.
Too eager to
please, I’m the child
who chokes
on a mud pie’s grit.
9 Dec
A loaf of bread, fresh from the oven, cools on
the kitchen counter.
Recently diapered, talcum scented, the baby
contentedly feeds.
The comfortable fit of this room a haven in
brilliant sunlight.
Through a wide open window, bird chatter
accompanies the breeze.
Within view, tomatoes plump with August.
Dirty dishes in the sink, crumbs and crusts
scattered on the floor.
The baby’s liquid dinner reintroduced on
your shoulder.
In unforgiving midday light, how tired you
and the carpet look.
The shrill timbal from competing cicadas
introduces a headache.
Looking out, the garden succumbs to weeds.
6 Dec
Deep sleep is a rock cleaved open,
untouchable, but experienced;
inside, a hardened darkness awaits.
Absent thought’s content, it is a
separate universe, stripped
of all starlight and shadowless.
A journey never recalled, where
only the heart’s persistence
insists on the dictates of breath.
As silence totals exponentially,
vocabulary’s landscape
becomes a forgotten language.
Locked inside such absoluteness,
we trust that a dream’s
kernel will sketch a roadmap out.
5 Dec
Set in Minneapolis during the administration of a Trump-like President, this novel published in 2020 focuses on a long married couple, Harold and Alma Britegan, retired and living in the suburbs of the city. In the opening chapter, both of them are worried about their son who has disappeared from their lives. Believing him to still be living in the city, possibly out on the streets, they actively go in search for him. This leads them to a young couple who may know his whereabouts, members of a community group called The Sun Collective.
The story that unfolds involves homelessness, rumors of right-wingers taking justice into their own hands, and possible terrorist activity. It is a premise meant to resonate with the time we are living in. But at its heart, it is about the relationship between Harold and Alma, who might fight and bicker but do so with love. While the plot is an engaging one, it fails to coalesce into a satisfying whole. The set pieces Wright uses to drive it forward too often seemed contrived. Worse still, a number of story lines are explored and then dropped for no reason. With the help of better editing, this novel could have been quite good.
5 Dec
Hilary Mantel is the only British writer to win two Man Booker Prizes. Best known for her historical fiction, for three decades she has also contributed essays, reviews, and pieces of memoirs to The London Review of Books. Mantel Pieces is a collection of these works, running from 1988 (her earliest) to 2017. Some of the individuals she profiles include the playwright John Osborne, the Virgin Mary, Christopher Marlowe, Marie-Antoinette, and numerous figures from the Tudor period in England.
Her topics range from the French Revolution, Tudor England and the reign of Henry VIII, witchcraft, and Catholicism, as well her personal life. One of these particularly stands out, Meeting the Devil, an account of a surgery she underwent in 2010 that resulted in life threatening complications. It is one of the better pieces I’ve read on pain and illness.
Mantel’s passionate and eloquent prose, laced with witty asides, fully fleshes out the historical characters she investigates. This collection proves she is an author who excels in humanizing the individuals she describes. For readers aware of her fictional work or not, Mantel Pieces will inform and delight from beginning to end.
Robert Up At Dawn 