Book Review: Restitution by Eliza Graham

An historical novel is not normally what I pick up in a bookstore but when Eliza Graham indicated she was looking for persons to review her book I could hardly object. She is a member of the same online writing group that I am and my goal is to read and review as many members’ books as I can. This may take a while as the group, Backspace, is growing by leaps and bounds.

The main thrust of the novel takes place in eastern Germany during the end of World War II. It takes a few chapters to get into the complex story as it weaves from 1920 to 2002 in a series of flashbacks to Alix’s parents’ childhood and courtship, Alix and Gregor’s pre-war years as childhood friends, the War itself in eastern Germany and London, 2002, where Alix lives as an elderly woman.

It is a love story about childhood friends who are separated by the war but are reunited briefly, at which point they realize their affection for each other is more than a childhood fantasy. Alix’s father, a Baron, is a German resistance fighter who Alix suspects has been arrested after participating in a plot to kill Hitler. In a blinding snowstorm she is fleeing her homeland during the Reds’ invasion when she happens upon her friend, Gregor, now a member of the Russian army. Their night together is their last but what came of it, a baby boy; and the welfare of the boy’s father, Gregor, haunts Alix the rest of her life. Though Gregor was a reluctant member of the dreaded Russian army he helps Alix escape capture the day after their tryst and does not learn they had a child together until sixty years later.

Alix had felt pressured by circumstance to give her baby up to the family that housed her during her pregnancy. It is not until sixty years later, the point where the novel begins, that Alix is oddly reunited with her son in London in 2002.

Eliza Graham’s writing is tight, her settings are detailed and her voice true, if a bit formal--which I took to reference Alix’s aristocratic background. Eliza Graham’s flashbacks are confusing at first as they jump back and forth. But the dates at the heading of each chapter and Eliza’s deft writing voice soon bring the different stories together into a cohesive and moving story of innocence, love and bravery. It is a story familiar to many who lived through the war. Reliving it through Alix’s eyes is enchanting, educational and endearing.

I want to thank Eliza Graham for the review copy of her novel. I enjoyed it thoroughly and look forward to reading her prior work, Playing With The Moon.

Book Review: Bel Canto

Bel Canto, by Ann Patchett, is a rewarding read on so many levels I can't begin to cover them all. I think what stayed with me the longest is that it is about boundaries and barriers and about how people cross them (or ignore them) is what defines them.

The book opens at the end of a private performance by Roxanne Coss, a renowned opera soprano's, for a host of dignitaries at the lavish mansion of a South American vice-president in celebration of the birthday of Mr. Hosokawa. He was an opera fanatic and the founder and chairman of Japan's largest electronics corporation and the hope was that he would build a factory in the host company.

The first boundary is crossed when the lights go out and the accompanist leans over and sneaks a 'strong and passionate' kiss onto Roxanne's lips and thereby crosses over, doing what 'all the men and women in the room...collectively' desire.

We soon learn the lights were extinguished by a band of marauding revolutionaries who look to kidnap the president who is not even in attendance at the event. A stalemate ensues that allows both the terrorists and the hostages opportunity to enjoy the music that Roxanne and others provide--a music that seems to cross the boundaries of the dangers present and unite everyone in a beautiful, harmonious existence.

Ann Patchett’s liquid language and unique tale about a likely but unlikely scenario as both the bad guys and the good guys become hostage to the rapture of music; hostages fall in love with their captors and untouchable opera divas fall in love with their admirers. It is as deceiving in its simplicity as it is simple in its message.

Bel Canto is a story about what constitutes barriers, what nourishes them and what happens on either side. There are many. First, there is the kiss. Then there is the wall that divides the mansion from the town--the dignitaries from the working class. There are the guns that separate the hostages from the renegades. There is the barrier of language among the 38 hostages and their captors. There are the barriers that the large corporations and governments put on their employees and citizens. There are the cultural barriers that forbid young female revolutionaries to fall in love with corporate interpreters; or, American opera stars to fall in love with Japanese CEOs; or, militant generals to teach chess to their teenage foot soldiers; or, entrepreneurs to play piano for militants. All of these are lyrically crossed.

Through it all we read about the beautiful music, which brings everyone together in appreciation and we come to love Gen, Mr. Hosokawa’s interpreter, who brings everyone together in language.

But all this happens in a most unlikely world, a Camelot given temporary sustenance by circumstance--a dream that can never come true.

Jaws of Death

This morning I sat at my writing desk determined to stay on schedule with my novel, the one I started two years ago about the love triangle between a young mandolin prodigy, his childhood sweetheart and his sister, who worships his childhood sweetheart. I want to finish my editing--have set the end of September as my goal and have to edit 15 pages a day to accomplish this. I am on track--was on track--until this morning.

I opened my laptop just I heard a massive iron beast pull into the driveway of the house two doors from ours. Rumbling and beeping its way to the back yard it appeared 100 feet from my bay window in its slicker yellow majesty. It stretched its sturdy neck, lifted its mighty head, dipped it, opened its jaws and ripped a sedan-size hole into the roof of my neighbor's house. After twenty minutes of tearing, pulling and shredding the dirty deed was done. I'm not kidding. That's how much time it took to reduce a two story, red brick, four bedroom structure to the size of a dumpster. Wow. Back to work.

I often have morning cramps--have self-diagnosed it as IBS. Enough information. Had it this morning--I thought. Not so lucky. Five hours later, here in bed under my comforter, I have awoken with the clear realization that the bug, which downed my husband this entire week, got me. Swine variety? I hope not.

Just as well. The house is gone but the 'Jaws of Death' have spent the last five hours ripping up the concrete driveway. I hope my own house survives the earth tremors and that tomorrow is a better day.

So much for keeping deadlines. The flu is just another reason to hate this time of year.

Did I mention I don't like September?

How Do They Do That?

Two fighters for the underdogs died yesterday. Crystal Lee Sutton was the humble, but tenacious, textile worker who inspired Sally Field's movie, 'Norma Rae.' She was 33 when she took on the national textile company, J.P. Stevens, to question their treatment of workers.
She went on to be a tireless advocate for women's equality in the workforce and the unfair treatment of workers in general.

Most of us were very familiar with the other, Patrick Swayze, who said at one time his goal was “to do something that will affect the audience in a positive way, make them feel better about their lives and appreciate what they have.”

Another thing Patrick said really stuck with me as a writer. “People don’t identify with victims,” he said in an interview with The Associated Press, discussing his “North and South” character, originally written as a more passive man. “They identify with people who have the world come down on their heads and who fight to survive.”

But I am also awed by the ability of these two people to pick their battles and stick with them with an emotional intensity that indicates total devotion. Patrick ignored the Hollywood lifestyle for the world of Arabian horses on his San Gabriel Mountain ranch. He filmed an A & E series while undergoing cancer treatments. He took roles that portrayed him as a serious actor though he is truly eye candy for any baby boomer.

Both Crystal Lee and Patrick recognized the dangers of crystalline lifestyles. Lifestyles that are shiny on the surface but empty underneath. Better yet, they fought to bring attention to the meatier lifestyles, the ones that mattered to the folks whose worlds had come 'down on their heads.'

Damn.