Nada by Carmen Laforet

Nada by Carmen Laforet
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Laforet's novel of post-Civil War Spain is as fresh and as compelling as it was when it won the Premio Nadal in 1944.  Her main character, 18-year-old Andrea, exemplifies the romance, optimism and utter despair of being a teenager, starting off in college, housed with a half-crazed, impoverished family on the Calle de Aribau.  Analogies to the economic and desperation in Spain after the war are inevitable, but the story rings with the truth of "having not" amongst classmates who have plenty and the agonies of youth as Andrea observes, weeps, roams through the memorable streets of Barcelona.


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Howards End by E.M. Forster

Howards End by E.M. Forster
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Reading the book in class was rewarding as we talked about far meatier subjects than I might have tackled on my own:  the industrial revolution which brought aspirants like Leonard Bast and Jacky, too,  into the city from the farm and made money for others like the Wilcoxes; the rise of feminism for those with time and education to embrace it; the mystical, ghostliness of Mrs. Avery, the housekeeper at Howard's End; changing morals with the rest of the cultural & social changes occurring; the altered landscape of London and affordable housing at the expense of the countryside and large estates; and what kind of future for Baby who is assured of money, education and WWII(portents of doom from Germany).


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Home by Toni Morrison

Home by Toni Morrison
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

It is a beautifully written book about the return of a young man from the Korean "Conflict" to his Georgia home, from the American Army to the segregation of the USA, a perfect Memorial Day read.  His Post Traumatic Stress Disorder is in full flower and his coping mechanisms at low ebb as he crosses the country from discharge in Seattle to his Georgia town.  I found something wanting in the tale, perhaps character development?  I'm not sure.  The plot was credible although the evil doctor seemed tacked on at the end and his work shrouded in haziness and the disloyalty of Sarah continuing to work for him as his victims passed through troubled me.


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More Was Lost by Eleanor Perenyi

More Was Lost by Eleanor Perenyi
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Insightful recollections of the author's short marriage to a Hungarian nobleman at the beginning of WWII as their estate is flung back and forth between warring factions placing them in Hungary, Czechlaslovakia, Ruthenia, and the Soviet Union in a few short years.  Her youth and naivete as an  American girl abroad is evident but it also allows for for her enthusiasm and bold spirit facing historically entrenched culture and prejudices.  She wrote a marvelous gardening book Green Thoughts: A Writer in the Garden on planting and growing on this property which lead me to More Was Lost.


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God on the Rocks by Jane Gardam

God on the Rocks by Jane Gardam
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Humor and heartbreak in delectable prose.  I adore Gardam and have for decades.  As the first paragraph of the NYT review by Nancy Kline puts it:
“God on the Rocks” is so charming a novel that you don’t want to give away a single one of the many twists of its plot. As its central character might ask: “Why can’t she just — not?” But Jane Gardam must be shared. She’s a find who’s just beginning to be found, at least on our side of the Atlantic (thanks to the novels “Old Filth” and “The Man in the Wooden Hat”), although more than 20 of her books have been published in England and she has won numerous prizes. Now at last comes the American publication of her early novel “God on the Rocks,” which was a finalist for the Booker Prize back in 1978. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/31/boo...



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You Deserve Nothing by Alexander Maksik

You Deserve Nothing by Alexander Maksik
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

You Deserve Nothing is set in a private international high school in Paris (the setting being yet another character in the story), with compelling first-person narrations by two students and their revered English teacher who challenges them to think about their reading in moral and philosophical terms.  They try to translate his intellectual messages to their lives and suffer the universal response of teenagers to the disappointments of adulthood as their beloved teacher seems to throw away his livelihood and career in careless, unwary behavior.  I read it with total absorption. The following passage about teachers stuck with me:

"The ones who stay are so often some of the most depressing people you've ever met in your life.  It has nothing to do with their age.  They've stayed because of their dispositions--bitter, bored, lacking in ambition, lonely, and mildly insane....This is what it takes to teach for half a life-time.  The ones who care, who love the subjects, who love their students, who love, above all, teaching--they rarely hang around."

Maksik is a gifted writer and I look forward to more of his work.


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Dancing to "Almendra" by Mayra Montero

Dancing to "Almendra" by Mayra Montero

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Alternating stories of a young journalist investigating the organized crime activity in gambling in 1950's Havana and the confessions of his girlfriend, a one-armed former circus performer.  Strange and bloody tale and I found it hard to care about the characters, although the Cuban atmosphere was authentic and rich.  You could almost hear the danzon music.

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