Recent Reviews
The Giver of Stars Jojo Moyes
Thanks to my fantastic DJKKS book club, I recently read Jojo Moyes’s historical novel The Giver of Stars. This uplifting story is about the power of books to change lives. Set in Baileyville, a small Kentucky mining town, the story celebrates five women who stand up to patriarchy. Moyes has developed wonderful characters that uniquely and collectively fight against the sexism, racism and hypocrisy of their time. Despite their struggles or maybe because of their efforts, I found the novel gratifying and inspiring.
During the Depression, President Franklin Roosevelt created the Works Progress Administration to improve the lives of suffering Americans. The WPA provided jobs and income to the unemployed. (Something to consider during this time of COVID-19). Under the auspices of the WPA, Eleanor Roosevelt led the effort to create the Pack Horse Library Project. From 1935-1943, the government paid women to deliver books to families in rural communities.
Into this history, Jojo Moyes begins her story. The year is 1937, and the five women librarians in Baileyville are grateful to have jobs that bring knowledge and joy to impoverished families. On horseback, they traverse beautiful landscapes, but the lives they witness are bleak. They learn that poor folks don’t want charity, but they do want books. The leader of the library ladies is Margery O’Hare, a feisty and determined woman who doesn’t pay attention to social conventions or listen to men. Her lover, Sven Gustavsson, wants to marry her, but as much as she loves him, she “won’t be owned by nobody. “ Margery’s father was an alcoholic who beat her. After Margery’s father dies, the town exhales with relief. Yet, soon their small-town hypocrisy is revealed. Few folks attend his funeral. But Margery is mocked as the girl who did not cry at her father’s service.
Another wonderful character is Alice Van Cleave, an English woman who marries a local man, Bennett Van Cleve. Alice thought leaving London would give her more freedom, but Eastern Kentucky proves just as provincial. Her unctuous father-in-law, with whom they live, manages the Hoffman Mining Company, the largest employer in town. Obsessed with his reputation and indifferent to injustice, he is a loathsome person. Aligned with one of the pastors in town, the senior Van Cleve attempts to shut down the library, arguing that domestic life is where women should find contentment. But Van Cleve’s opposition also derives from his greed An educated workforce might unionize. An educated populace might resist the paltry amounts offered for their valuable land. Alice and her fellow librarians know what is at stake and courageously resist attempts to stop their work.
The book is layered with themes and sub-plots. There is a love story, a trial, friendships, betrayals, an environmental catastrophe, redemption, reconciliation and enriching references to specific books and poems. Moyes has captured the way books can change how people feel and think. The Giver of Stars is also a testament to the power of women to make lasting change.
The Weight of Ink by Rachel Kadish
Rachel Kadish’s The Weight of Ink is possibly my favorite book of 2018. In every page, I could feel Kadish’s passionate commitment to her characters and to the historical period she describes. Her appreciation of the written word is evident as she captures both the smallest details and largest historical themes. At one level the novel is a mystery to be solved. Yet due to Kadish’s skills as a writer and thinker, we are exposed to other levels of inquiry and thought: philosophy, the nature of love, religious viewpoints, moral obligations, the existence of God, gender roles and the power of the past to affect the present. No lightweight list of ideas to contemplate.
The novel opens in 2000. Helen Watt is a Professor of History at a University in London. When a former student asks her to examine a cache of old letters discovered in a 350 year-old-home he recently inherited, Helen is astounded by what she finds. She knows immediately these letters, written in Hebrew and Portuguese from the 1660s, are historically significant.
The novel then shifts to London in 1657. We meet Ester Valasquez, a young woman in her late teens who was adopted by Rabbi HaCoen Mendes after her parents died. Rabbi Mendes and Ester have left Amsterdam and traveled to London where the Rabbi will lead a small Jewish community. Because he was tortured for not renouncing his faith during the Inquisition, Rabbi Mendes is now blind. Though the rabbi does not support women reading or writing, Ester is a skilled scribe and secretly assists with his correspondence.
Though 400 years separate Helen and Ester, both women seek to utilize their intellectual gifts. Their identities are intrinsically connected to their ability to think and express themselves by writing down their thoughts. Ester says, “.... the unpooling of ink has brought me much comfort always, and often have I written what I would not speak.” However, the religious, social and political customs of that time period do not allow women that option. Esters complains, “A woman’s body was a prison in which her mind must wither.” Nonetheless, Ester develops a way to communicate her own thoughts even as she continues to scribe for the Rabbi. This bold decision contributes to the mystery of these letters three centuries later. In 2000, women participate fully in academia. However, Helen Watt still faces sexism and isolation by the male colleagues in her department. Yet because of brave women like Ester Valequez, Helen Watt publishes her thoughts under her own name.
Kadish’s novel also illuminates the unfair and precarious plight of the Jews. Though fortunate to be in London and not Spain, the Jewish community of London in the late 17th century is at the mercy of the clerical and political leaders of London. An acquaintance of Ester says, “… to be a Jew in this world, I understand is a danger. If a Jew speaks the truth of his faith in the wrong moment, though that faith harms none, he brings down untold wrath.” Kadish depicts the texture of oppression the Jewish community faced during this time.
Rotating between two time structures can be difficult. Often readers connect to the characters in one time period but not characters in the other. In The Weight of Ink I felt immersed in the characters’ struggles from both time periods. At 560 pages, The Weight of Ink is not a short read, but it is an emotionally, intellectually and worthwhile one.
The Little Paris Bookshop by Nina George
As this tumultuous year comes to an end, I decided to read Nina George’s The Little Paris Bookshop. After watching this book stay steady on the New York Times Bestseller List for over a year, I thought a book about books might bring me comfort. Though the novel seems to be two novellas competing for control of the plot, it is a worthwhile book to read if only to remind us that literature can be a powerful and healing force.
John Perdu’s bookstore is a floating barge tied to a dock on the Seine River in Paris. Perdu views his bookshop as a “literary apothecary.” After his first love leaves him, his heart is broken and he spends his days selecting books that will hopefully mend his customers’ broken souls (and at some level his own). With an almost psychic sense of what ails a customer, he zeroes in on which book might heal that person. The premise is a bit overdone, yet that experience resonates with anyone who has felt the comfort of a powerful book.
Here are my two favorite Perdu quotes about books:
“I sell books like medicine. There are books that are suitable for 1 million people, others for 100. There are even medicine – sorry, books – that were written for one person only.”
“I wanted to treat feelings that are not recognized as afflictions and are never diagnosed by doctors. All those little feelings and emotions no therapist is interested in, because they're apparently too minor and intangible. The feeling that washes over you when another summer nears its end. Or when you recognize that you haven't got your whole life left to find out where you belong. Or the slight sense of grief when a friendship doesn't develop as you thought, and you have to continue your search for a lifelong companion for those birthday morning blues. Nostalgia for the air of your childhood. Things like that.”
Of course, like most people, Perdu’s intuitive directives don’t apply to himself. When the married woman he loved left him twenty years ago, he retreated into his bookshop and didn’t open the letter she left him. His view of her is naïve and immature (and did I say she was married?). But Perdu's overwhelming grief and fear caused by her departure prohibits him from opening the letter (a form of literature) that would have brought him some solace.
In the second part of the novel, Perdu unties his bookshop barge and begins both a physical and emotional journey to confront his feelings about the ending of that relationship. As his new friend Catherine states, “Everybody has an inner room where demons lurk. Only when we open it and face up to it are we free.” And that is what Peru does. He faces his demons and is able to start another chapter of his life. On this adventure, he begins to understand more about himself and the way he copes with pain. He concludes that his parents’ divorce affected him more than he realized and that his acute sensitivity rendered him emotionally paralyzed.
The second half of the book is less charming and concludes too neatly. Yet being in the presence of John Purdu and his two traveling companions as they float down the Seine discussing the importance of love, the meaning of life, and books that matter, it is easy to be swept away with them.
