Brooklyn by Colm Toibin

Brooklyn by Colm Toibin
262 pages
Published March 2010 Simon & Schuster Adult
Source: bought this one to read with the Omaha Bookworms

In Enniscorthy, Ireland in post World War II, jobs are tough to come by so when Eilis Lacey is offered a part-time job at a local shop she can't turn down the opportunity despite the fact that neither her mother nor her sister approve of the owner. Not long afterward, Eilis' beloved sister, Rose, tells Eilis and her mother that she has invited a Father Flood to tea. Father Flood is originally from Enniscorthy but is currently living in the U.S. His purpose in coming to tea is to invite Eilis to come to Brooklyn; he will sponsor her and has already lined up a job and housing. As she sits there listening to the good father, Eilis realizes that both her mother and sister are being unusually quiet and it comes to her that it's really already been decided that she will be going to America.

After a horrible journey across rough seas, Eilis arrives in America to begin her new life and soon settles into a routine that is, well, routine and a little boring. Despite living in Brooklyn in a very exciting time, Eilis lives a very insular life. She goes to work, she goes to night school, she spends what little free time she has almost exclusively at the boarding house. And in all of those places, Eilis makes almost no effort to befriend anyone. She can't seem to find the place where she fits in and the things that happen around her seem to affect her very little. Perhaps the only thing that she is at all aware of is all of the discrimination rampant in the ethnically diverse borough.

Finally Eilis meets a nice Italian boy and discovers first love and finally becomes more a part of America. Then a terrible tragedy takes her back to Ireland. Once there, Eilis begins to feel the draw of a real home, unsure whether she will ever return to America.

I read this book with the Omaha Bookworms for our May selection after it was recommended by one of our members (Mari of Bookworm With A View). Mari loved it, in no small part because it evoked memories of stories she had heard from her grandparents who were Irish immigrants who settled in Brooklyn at about the same time. Only half of the ladies had actually finished the book so it was hard to talk too much about the book but even those who had only gotten part way through the book were really enjoying it.

Time moves at quite a pace in Brooklyn; Toibin bypasses long periods of time between episode and vignettes. Toibin compares his writing style to Ernest Hemingway with good cause; he knows how to tell a story with just what is necessary to tell the story perfectly. Nothing showy or lush about Brooklyn. All of the emotion is just under the surface and yet it is palpable and the characters are believable and realistic. This book was twice short-listed for the Mann Booker Prize and now I know why.

Little Bee by Chris Cleave

Little Bee by Chris Cleave
288 pages
Published February 2009 by Simon and Schuster Adult
Source: bought it for the Omaha Bookworms March read

After two years in a British detention center for immigrants, Little Bee is finally being released along with three other refugees.  Each of the girls is carrying a plastic bag with all of their worldly belongings in them.  For one of the girls, the bag is empty, in another there are pineapple rings, in a third there is a mass of official documents.  In Little Bee's there is a business card and a driver's license belonging to Andrew O'Rourke.

 "The African girl they locked up in the immigration detention center, poor child, she never really escaped. In my soul she is still locked up in there, forever, under the fluorescent lights, curled up on the green linoleum floor with her knees tucked up under her chin. And this woman they released from the immigration detention center, this creature that I am, she is a new breed of human. There is nothing natural about me. I was born - no, I was reborn - in captivity."

 Ten days later, Little Bee rings the door bell at the O'Rourke home, stunning Sarah O'Rourke. Andrew and Sarah had first met Little Bee on a beach in Nigeria while they were on a vacation but neither of them had ever expected to see Little Bee again.  All three of them have never forgotten what happened that day.

Have you ever seen the movie "The Crying Game?" Toward the end of that movie there was a major revelation that entirely changed everything. The makers of the movie asked that viewers of the movie not let the secret out and people were astonishingly good about not reveling the secret. This publishers of this book have made a similar request of readers and in the spirit of not spoiling the book for anyone, I'm going not going to give anything more of the plot away. Although I don't think the twist in Little Bee that has been so well guarded is quite as shocking, there are actually a number of surprises in this book.

The book is written in alternating first-person narratives by both Little Bee and Sarah and both women bare their souls to the reader. Cleave does a marvelous job of capturing both voices. Occasionally I felt that the book dragged a bit on both sides of the story and I found myself not much liking Sarah, but then I'm sure that Cleave did not intend for his readers to like her. Little Bee's narratives were full of wonderful observations about society that really caught my attention.

"Everything was happiness and singing when I was a little girl. There was plenty of time for it. We did not have hurry. We did not have electricity or fresh water or sadness either, because none of these had been connected to our village yet."

I have often thought that all the things we think people in remote villages need are just the things that start causing problems for the villagers.

I've been wanted to read Little Bee since it first came out but finally got to it because the Omaha Bookworms chose it for our March read. In the same paragraph as the above quote, three of us had marked this passage as an example of Cleave's lovely writing.

"I sat in between the roots of my limba tree and I laughed while I watched Nkiruka swinging back and fro, back and fro. The tether of the swing was very long, so it took a long time for her to travel from one end of its swing to the other. It never looked like it was in a rush, that swing. I used to watch it all day long and I never realized that I was watching a pendulum counting down the last seasons of peace in my village."

Little Bee was recommended to me by a number of people as an excellent book club read and they were so right. Several of the ladies had not finished the book yet but all were eager to discuss what they had read and all enjoyed the book. Little Bee is not a light nor an easy read but it is a book well worth reading.

Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford

Hotel On The Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford
320 pages
Published October 2009 by Random House Publishing Group
Source: Lisa and TLC Book Tours and the Random House

It's 1986 and Henry Lee happens to be walking past the Panama Hotel, once the gateway to Seattle's Japantown but long since boarded up, when he notices that a crowd has gathered at the steps leading into the hotel. The new owner, getting ready to refurbish the building, has discovered a basement full of the belongings of Seattle's Japanese families that were sent to internment camps. As the owner shows the crowd a Japanese parasol, Henry's mind begins wandering back in time to the 1940's and his youth.

Henry, the son of Chinese immigrants, is being forced to attend an American school, rather than then Chinese school where he felt much more at home. But, because of World War II and China's war with Japan, Henry's father feels that Henry needs to become more American. He forces Henry to speak only in English, despite the fact that neither of Henry's parents understand much English and speak even less. And despite that fact that Henry's father is a fierce Chinese patriot. Henry is miserable at the school as the only student of Asian descent; he is regularly harassed by the school bullies, must work in the lunchroom for a woman who makes him very uncomfortable, and his father makes him wear a button that says "I am Chinese." Henry's only real friend is a young black man, Sheldon, who plays saxophone on a street corner.

Then Keiko Okabe begins working in the lunchroom. Keiko is of Japanese descent and, therefore, off limits as far as Henry's father is concerned. Their growing friendship must be kept hidden. One night they sneak off to a jazz club, where Sheldon is playing. They are having an amazing night until the reality of the times they are living in strike home. The club is raided and the Japanese patrons are arrested. Soon all of the Japanese are rounded up and sent to internment camps. Henry promises Keiko he will wait for her.

Forty years later, Henry is a widower and is more than a little upset to realize that his relationship with his only son, Marty, is no better than the one he had with his own father. When Marty introduces Henry to the girl he is engaged to marry, Henry realizes he has the opportunity to make things better. He enlists the two to help him find an record in the basement of the Panama Hotel, a record that has music on it that Henry and Keiko heard that night they were in the jazz club. Henry has never forgotten his first love.

Generally, I try to give you both the strengths and weaknesses of a book. But I'm hard pressed to find much to give you in the way of weaknesses. I do have mixed feelings about the ending--a part of me was very satisfied with it and a part of me felt it should have been handled differently. Ford does make use of some cliches and fiction standards (such as the school yard bullies). The love story was charming but I did, sometimes, have a problem believing that a love that begins between two eleven-year-olds would stand the test of time. But I was so taken by Henry and Keiko that I was more than willing to buy into their relationship. Publishers Weekly calls the narrative flat and the book strained and disappointing. Ford's writing does not have the lyricism and poetry of some writers but I did not find the book disappointing. I was concerned that I might. I was prepared to; I was expecting so much from this book.

The reality of what happened to the Japanese in this country during the second World War provides more than enough emotional punch. As in this scene where the Henry finds the Japanese burning anything that might make them appear to be Japanese spies to the American authorities:

""Why are they doing this?" Henry asked, not fully understanding what he was seeing with his own eyes.

"They arrested more people last night. Japanese, all over the city. All over Puget Sound. All over the state, maybe," the photographer told him. "People are getting rid of anything that might connect them to the war with Japan. Letters from Nippon. Clothing. It all must go. Too dangerous to keep. Even old photos. People are burning photos of their parents, of their families.""

I was aware of the internment of the Japanese during World War II but I have never really read anything that specified how it was done nor how the Japanese were treated. I found this part of the book fascinating; it was well worth reading the book for this alone.

Thanks to Lisa and TLC Book Tours for including me in the tour of this wonderful book! I think this would make a terrific choice for a book club read. I myself have sticky notes all over the book of things that a group could discuss.

The Cost of Dreams by Gary Stelzer

The Cost of Dreams by Gary Stelzer
296 pages
Published October 2009 by Decent Hearts Press
Source: Robin of Carol Fass Publicity and Public Relations

This is the tale of Flora Enriquez, who is first introduced to the reader as a thirteen-year-old living in a Central American village when American Kate Bowman comes to spend time as an aide worker with her nephew. A year later we pick up again with Flora as she and her siblings are preparing to cross the border into the U.S. in search of a better life. When Flora's sister dies during the crossing and her brothers are captured by border guards, Flora is left on her own. She eventually finds herself living in the shed of a wealthy family who hire her as a maid when they discover her. She makes herself indispensable to the family and convinces them to pay for her education as a teacher. When she is just 20, she meets Monte Erickson and soon finds herself married to him. Unfortunately, he carries the baggage of a very violent, criminal brother. Eventually the couple and their two children flee the apartment they have been renting from the brother and settle into a new life with Monte working in the mines and Flora working as a teacher. But when Monte's brother finds them, Flora's life takes a dramatic turn. Shot and near death, she is saved from the brother by a Mexican woman who has crossed illegally and is traveling in a boxcar to meet her husband. Marguerite believes that Flora is her deceased daughter, returned to her and convinces her husband that they must help her. Life becomes a daily battle as Flora needs much more care than the family is able to provide. Unable to speak, Flora is on an odyssey that will take her from Texas to the shores of Lake Michigan then all the way back to Mexico.

I have to admit that I was ready to put this book down after 30 pages. I found a number of glaring errors that were really distracting for me (one of Flora's brother's was 16 on page 13 then 15 on page 14 and Flora's height went from 4'10" to 5'3"). But I always try to give a book a 100 page chance to I pushed on. By the time I reached the 100 page mark, the writing had evened out and the story was unique enough that it kept me reading to the end.

Stelzer certainly has an epic story to tell; unfortunately, his writing style didn't work for me. Beyond the errors, I felt like there was just too much going on in the book and that the pacing was uneven. Stelzer has done his research on the Barrances del Cobre aborigines and was clearly well-versed in small planes and their operation. He also portrays a very believable picture of what life as an illegal immigrant must be like.

For a completely different opinion, please visit Cheryl's Book Nook. Cheryl found the book "wonderful" and was "lost in this book instantly." Beth, of Beth's Book Review Blog, also found the book "well-written and engrossing."

There is much more about the book at Gary's site. Thanks Robyn, for allowing me, once again to expand my knowledge of the way other people live.