****The Dwarf by Pär Lagerkvist

• Pär Lagerkvist, 1891-1974, Sweden
• received the Nobel Prize for Literature,  1951
• The Dwarf was first published in 1945
• was written at the height of Hitler's powers

Vocabulary 

• pasquinade - a satire or lampoon,  especially one posted in a public place
• jackanapes- an impertinent presumptuous person, especially a young man
• jeremiad - a long, mournful complaint  or lamentation; a list of woes; 

Setting: Renaissance, Italy (approx. late 15th c. to early 16th c.)

Characters

• Piccoline -  dwarf; narrator; an evil misanthrope; is dedicated to Prince Leone, only; hates anything to do with love or bodily functions
• Prince Leone - Teodora's husband and the dwarf's master  
• Princess Teodora - adulterous wife; involved romantically with Don Riccardo for many years.
• Angelica- daughter of Prince & Princess, in love w/ Giovanni Montanza (Prince's enemy)
• Bernardo (The Great Master) - a painter hired by the Prince (is patterned after Leonardo Da Vinci)
• Don Riccardo - of noble lineage, the Princesses' lover
• Boccarossa-  originally condottiere for Prince Leone, but switches sides and joins Lodovico's men after certain events occur
• Lodovico Montanza il Toro - Prince of Montanza (Prince Leone's ancestors have battled with them for last two centuries.)
• Beatrice - revered wife of Lodovico who died 10 years prior.
• Giovanni - son of Prince Lodovico & Princess Beatrice. In love with Angelica (father's enemy)

Theme: Evil - dark side of human nature, faith vs reason

Quotes & Notes 
Quotes are from Piccoline (except where noted).

• I have heard tell that we dwarf's are descended from a race older than that which now populates the world,  and therefore we are old as soon as we are born. (p. 6) Separates Piccoline from the human race he hates - self-deception.

• Love is something which dies and when dead it rots and becomes soil for a new love.  Then the dead love continues its secret life in the living one, and thus in reality there in no death in love. (pp. 22-23) Part of Piccoline's self-defense mechanism - by hating anything to do with "humans" and the emotion of love, he is able to live in a world that ostracizes him and treats him as something "other". In essence, and as part of his self-defense mechanism, he is ostracizing and treating man as "other".

• I have noticed that I frighten people; what they really fear is themselves. They think it is I who scare them, but it is the dwarf within them, the ape-faced manlike being who sticks up its head from the depths of their souls.

• Bernardo:  Our are fates predetermined? If so, all our efforts to seek truth & attempts at happiness are in vain.  God is like a falconer whom allows freedom of thought and exploration, but only as far as his leash allows. 
•  ...is it not the secret of our being that we are always subject to the hand of the falconer?
• What use are our wings when they can never be spread? They become a burden instead of a release. They weigh us down,  we trail them and finally we hate them. (p. 55)

• He has painted her exactly as she is, like a middle-aged whore. It is really like her, diabolically so. The voluptuous face with the heavy eyelids and the vague lustful smile, everything is like her. And he has put all her soul into the picture; it is uncannily revealing.  (p. 56)

• Piccoline on war:
• Warfare...It is a marvelous life! Body and soul feel liberated when you take part in war...Never in all my life have I been so happy. (p. 77)
• ... I crave combat with all my soul...War is no game to me, but grim reality. I want to fight, I want to kill! Not for the glory of it, but for the deed alone. 
• I think the world has gone mad! Lasting peace! No more war! What flummery, what childishness!  Do they think they can change the cosmic system? What conceit! And what infidelity toward the past and the great traditions.  (p. 121)

• Love is always disgusting. 

• The guests stuffed themselves with food and I began to feel the discomfort,  the vague nausea from which I always suffer when I see people eating, especially when they are gluttonous. They gaped in the most disgusting manner in order to make room for the too large bits and their jaw muscles champed in constant unison, while one could see the tongue moving about the food inside the mouth. (p.137)

• A people without a leader is nothing but a miserable flock of sheep.  (p.162)

• Human beings like to see themselves reflected in clouded mirrors.  (p. 225)

****And After Many Days by Jowhor Ile

Author was raised in Port Harcourt, Nigeria and currently resides in London, b. 1980 This book takes place in Ile's hometown, Port Harcourt, Nigeria A LibraryThing.com Early Reviewer's book to be published February 2016, USA Book designer: Lauren Dong Setting:  1995 Port Harcourt Nigeria, during a radical time of change, violence & corruption Quote Draw yourself a straight line, walk backwards on it to erase your footsteps and you will trip and crack your skull. Straddle the two sides of a stream and you will unhinge your hips. Be unstable as waters and you will not excel. Jowhor Ile's writing is beautiful and quietly captivating. There is a slow rhythmic quality to his work that dances back and forth through time as the story unfolds. Despite themes of political and personal greed and corruption, Ile's narrative remains elegant throughout.  I look forward to future work by this new literary voice.

****Medicine Walk by Richard Wagamse

	●Canadian Literature ●Tom Stechschulte (Narrator) ●Justin Rexford (Cover Designer) ●Recorded Books/Maple Leaf Audio , 2015, unabridged ●7 CD's, 8hours/1 minute

The Start of 2016 Books

This marks the end of my 2015 reading journal and the beginning of a brand new year of books.  I am excited to begin as I have just purchased some exciting new books and have shelves full of great books I have been waiting to read. There is also my never ending list of books I want, but have not yet purchased and many more that I have not yet discovered. Cheers to all bibliophiles and to another great year of reading (and reviews- when I allow myself the time to write them) and the interesting, creative and exciting minds and places they reveal. Happy reading!

*****The Palm-Wine Drinker by Amos Tutuola

• Note: SPOILERS throughout my narrative. 
• 
  
•      Amos Tutuola,  1920-1997
• A native of Abeokuta, a town in Western Nigeria, Tutuola is a member of the Yoruba tribe.
• During his childhood, Tutuola was formerly educated for only six years.
• Tutuola was educated in a village 23.75 miles from his father's village. When Tutuola needed money for school, fees and living expenses he had to make the long trek, on foot, to his father's village. Before that, he lived with an old woman hired by Tutuola's financial sponsor far away from home. She worked him like a slave, kept him from some of his schooling and barely fed him, saving the sponsor's money for herself. These experiences, along with the dark native tales that filled his boyhood, color Tutuola's work. His characters roam for hundreds of miles serving as slaves, starving, with garish metamorphic creatures challenging and abusing the protagonist at every turn. This is particularly seen in, My Life in the Bush of Ghosts where the narrator is on an unexpected journey that begins when he is a seven year old boy and continues into his adulthood.
• Tutuola combines native Nigerian folklore, symbols and themes with contemporary culture. Together, they form the unique and surrealist imagery found in both stories. 

• I enjoyed My Life in the Bush of Ghosts more than The Palm-Wine Drinkard, yet both are intensely memorable. The journey seems more complete, the story is deeper and more developed, as are the characters, especially the protagonist.

 My Life in the Bush of Ghosts - A Vignette

• Themes: metamorphoses, hunger, the journey, animal sacrifice, good and evil (love/hate, hunger/satiated, confinement [ especially against ones will, etc.] /freedom )

Notes and Quotes

• The bush is a where ghosts live. In some areas of Africa the bush is still forbidden territory. "This Bush of Ghosts was so dreadful that no superior earthly person ever entered it." (p. 22)
• The Bush of Ghosts is located on the second side of the world between heaven and earth. Humans are strictly banned from the bush.
• The narrator looses his youthful innocence during his nightmarish journey and learns the meaning of bad and good, which is what hatred did.
•  p. 17 & p. 174  I was seven years old before I understood the meaning of 'bad' and 'good'...This is what hatred did. These are the first and last sentences of the story. The Bush comes in between. The narrator/boy was forced into the Bush to hide from war. The war is hatred learned.
• Tutuola's imagery is deeply archetypal and highly visual. A few examples can be found in the following scenes: 
• Once in the Bush of Ghosts, the narrator-boy comes upon a golden door leading to three rooms - one of gold, one of silver and one of copper. Each door is fronted by a naked ghost who is the same color as his door. The boy is told to pick which door he would like to enter.  Each ghost entices the narrator to choose his door by pointing a long and ugly beseeching finger at him. As he moves across and in front of each door/ghost, the narrator's body is flooded with light the color of each ghost's body.
•  The boy's choice was also influenced by the smell of different foods pouring out of each colored door. The boy had not eaten in a while and was ravished. The smell of the enticing foods began to influence his decision as to which door to choose. The ghosts aware of this, told the boy he was not to make his choice with his mouth; yet he chooses the copper door because it smelled like African food, the food he is used to and loves. Upon entering, all havoc breaks loose. The three ghosts start fighting, pulling on the boy, terrifying and hurting him. When he screams, other ghosts in the area appear in order to help settle the matter. Some of the ghosts do not have hands, others no feet or heads, some are without eyes or ears. Order is temporarily restored when the fearful Smelling-Ghost arrives.
• The Smelling-Ghost - living on his body were "all kinds of snakes, centipedes and flies...bees, wasps and uncountable mosquitoes...he wore many scorpions on his fingers as rings...and many poisonous snakes were on his neck as beads and he belted his leather trousers with a very big and long boa constrictor which was still alive. His smell...his body was full of excreta, urine and was also wet with the rotten blood of all the animals that he was killing for his food." The fighting does not stop so the Smelling-Ghost throws the boy into a bag filled with centipedes, small snakes and mosquitoes and takes off. The boy has no idea what is going to happen to him. This is where the punishments in the Bush of Ghosts begins for the boy and continues throughout the story until he is finally brought out of the Bush and magically returns home. Although being home is not an easy conclusion. You must read the book to find out why. 

• The above description is a spoiler, albiet a relatively small one. There are many, many more ghosts and harrowing adventures to come. The imagery is as incredible and creative as it is grotesque. Tutuola's language, summoned from hundreds and thousands of years of oral tradition, are translated through his contemporary voice. He conjures up many of the fears experienced and shared by mankind. His literary voice is important both aesthetically and historically as it chronicles a rich and vanishing culture - especially as influenced by the West.

• p. 162  ...every earthly person gets eyes but cannot see. 

The Palm-Wine Drinkard - A Vignette

• Themes: the impermanence of death, fighting death, fertility of life: of soil and cycle of human life, the failure of nature, which leads to ritual sacrifices of food and people in order to restore balance.

•  This story has a similar narrative in that the protagonist meets up with strange creatures culled from native symbols and mythology. Yet this journey is about death. Death is not permanent, it is not the end, but a passage. The narrator begins his quest as an adult. As such, he does not start out innocent as the boy in Bush of Ghosts. The protagonist starts out as a wealthy man who goes in search of his expert palm-wine tapster. 
• Africa is being influenced by the Western world and becomes overpowered through colonization.
• Following that thought, the loss of the palm-wine tapster is symbolic of the loss of the native African culture to modern European lifestyle, and as a result of colonization. The narrator journeys into the unknown world, in essence, to find his culture and bring it back home - the African bush. It is a sobering journey.
• Tutuola illustrates how captives can wind up identifying with their captures and wind up working along side them.
• The character, The Skull as the Complete Gentlemen, symbolizes the European modern gentlemen inciting his influence, causing temptation. The girl is warned not to be fooled by this man, but he proves irresistible.
• The fear of death is universal due to the ephemeral nature of life. In this tale individuals can buy and sell certain aspects of their lives. For example, they can sell their deaths and live forever. But, they cannot sell fear. In order to avoid death, the narrator & his wife sell their deaths. However, they perpetually experience fear (of death) because fear is an innate part of death. So, while they will never die, they will always live with the imminent fear of death. 

Quotes

• p. 181    The missionaries - courageous and mostly doomed - frequently brought, or possibly had to bring, to their civilizing mission that narrow self-righteousness that is so often the sword and shield of the religious idealist.
• p. 199    The old man had thought that Death would kill me if I went to his house, because nobody could reach Death's house and return, but I had known the old man's trick already.
• p. 253    This is only fear for the heart but no dangerous to the heart.

 

*****The Blind Owl by Sadegh Hedayat

This is an incomplete and unedited overview of The Blind Owl.  I have published it in this form because I do not know when or if I will get back to working on it soon. However, it is such a magnificent and important work of literature, I hope what information I do provide entices you to read this novel. Despite the fact it is a novella it warrants a minimum of two readings. I have read it once, hence my reluctance to complete and edit my scruffy notes at this time.

Sadegh Hedayat 1903-1951

• Sadegh Hedayat  1903-1951
• first published 1937
• written in Persian
• first printed in Bombay bearing the stamp, "Not for sale or publication in Iran"
• 1941 - first appeared in Tehran as a serial in the weekly journal, Iran.
• It was believed that The Blind Owl made its readers commit suicide.
• This novel has been banned several times.
• Translated by D.P. Costello
• Introduction by Porochista Khakpour
• psycho-fiction
• Hedayat is considered the father of modern Iranian Literature
• Committed suicide at age 48 while living in France.

Setting city of Rey, now known as Tehran, Persia (now Iran) Main Character* -  an unnamed pen-case artist who narrates the entire novel Themes and Motifs (These should not be housed as one; please bear with me for now.) death (esp by murder or suicide: i.e., narrator will give woman his poisoned wine to kill her, or narrator will drink it in order to kill himself  p. 63) sexual desire madness - a developing psychosis repetition** opposites: desire for sex vs. sexual repulsion, fear of death and desire for it Symbols owl black eyes cypress tree jar/container form, as in an urn smell of cucumber on especially a female's breath (as adult or child) Quotes & Notes This book opens with one of those fantastic and memorable first lines you do not easily forget:  "There are sores which slowly erode the mind in solitude like a kind of canker."  (p. 17) *Protagonist / narrator  - it is difficult to determine what are hallucinatory and what are real thoughts: Is there one female who symbolizes all females - i.e., the desired woman = the unattainable wife.  Likewise, are all or some of the portrayed men the narrator hallucinating- i.e., the butcher across the street = the one who butchered the girl, or his wife. Simultaneously, is the narrator also the sinister hearse driver who must bury the girl.  Is there a male nanny with his wife caring for him (the narrator), or is the nanny really his uncle, a person who cared for him in the past, or the narrator simply imagining someone taking care of his psychotic self.  ● Old men are always depicted as feeble with crazy laughter, women are seductress' but unattainable, so must die. **"I write only for the benefit of my shadow cast on the wall," is an  oft repeated phrase throughout the novel. The novel is broken up into two sections: The first part is a sort of journey where the narrator, a painter of pen-cases, sets out to find a woman who haunts his mind, the same woman he paints on his pen-cases. In the second section the narrator confesses his murder, revealing the background of the first section, as he is cared for by a Nanny and his wife. There is a developing sense of madness that increases as the novel progresses.   The narrator addresses his murderous confessions to the shadow on the wall which resembles an owl.

****The Physics of Sorrow by Georgi Gospodinov )

• Open Letter Book
• Originally published in 2011; first published in English in 2015
• Translated from the Bulgarian by Angela Rodel 
• Contemporary Literature 
• Author was born in Bulgaria in 1968. He is a poet, playwright and writer.

In Physics of Sorrow, Gospodinov offers his reader an asymmetrical quasi-autobiography as he describes life in communist and post communist Bulgaria. He combines varying levels of humor, irony and sorrow as he describes his experiences and thoughts. Gospodinov uses a contemporary and complex literary language, identifying himself with the mythical Minotaur trapped in the labyrinth. Sometimes I was happily lost within Gospodinov's narrative and other times I felt frustrated by his seemingly random thoughts that I knew were anything but random - they were just part of the labyrinth. Whether I was spellbound or distracted,  I knew I was reading one man's brilliance, such was the quality, complexity and intricacy of the author's narrative.

After taking some time away from this novel, I returned to it for a partial rereading.   I could no longer find what had originally caused my frustration. I realized I needed time to process what I had already read in order to think more about what Gospodinov was saying and why.  Only then was I able to appreciate how his deconstructionist style complemented his purpose and found myself increasingly excited as my understanding of his writing deepened.

I find that whenever I am frustrated by an author's narrative, if I take the time to pull away and process what I have read and revisit the writing, as I did with Physics of Sorrow,  I am able to come out of the process with a clarified and heightened reading experience and a better understanding of the author's process and intention.


Notes on Themes & Motifs

Author

• Wrote this book, in part, in response to a published article which claimed that Bulgaria was the saddest place in the world.
• We am. Emotionally connected to his grandfather and father. Shares stories as if he was both his Grandfather and himself, interconnected as one. 
• Tells stories of his individual experiences growing up in Bulgaria and a collection of memories as lived by his nation.
• Through these stories Gospodinov  attempts to give meaning to what feels like an otherwise meaningless world.

Primary themes: sorrow and empathy; repression and expression, formation of a collective memory; preserving human experiences. 

Minotour

• from Greek mythology 
• creature with a body of a man and the head and tail of a bull
• born out of revenge
• food = humans
• Theseus was given a golden thread by his lover Ariadne, Minos daughter, so he could find his way out of the labyrinth after slaying the minotaur. Subsequently, enroute home and after Ariadne was left on an island resulting in Theseus distraction, Theseus forgot to put up the white flag for his father, Aegeus, to indicate he was alive after his venture. In response, Aegeus killed himself by throwing himself into the sea, now named after him -  the Aegean Sea. 

• author identifies with the mythical Minotaur, trapped in his labyrinth.
• Author's daughter, Aya, is in effect his thread that keeps him from the overbearing sorrow that he began to experience in his adult years. She fills him with pure joy. She is light, the future and hope. 

Labyrinth

• in myth: the minotaur lived in a labyrinth

• as symbol of the the center of oneself
•  the depths of the unconscious 
• a journey through the mind, with detours, loss of direction, redirection
• undergoes a transformation, searching until one attains a state of grace or enlightenment
• a victory, from darkness to light
• author describes his novel as a literary labyrinth

• Since I (author) am here in his memory (grandfather's)...I am already inside the labyrinth. (p.13)

•  stories as labyrinth: author's pathological empathetic-somatic syndrome: the corridors toward others and their stories. The author lives out everyone else's story as his own (p. 119)
• I cannot offer a linear story, because no labyrinth and no story is ever linear.
• Author takes the reader through his labyrinth of a novel. You travel down one corridor (a story) which twists and turns leading to a different corridor (another thought or story).  He gets lost, bounds forwards and backwards, twists around, bends and heads in yet another direction. The novel continues this way throughout the course of this, ultimately, collective story. The author retells life as we truly live it - without structure and with other experiences occurring in between forming new and varied stories.

Cellar/basement

• relates to self knowledge
• in Islam, a secret chamber where one symbolically withdraws to unite himself with God; where divine knowledge is stored

Repression - Once freed of communism,  Bulgarians were free to tell their stories. Gospodinov wants to preserve these stories through his writing.

Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny - How the Bulgarians came to their history, their evolution and development; how the history of their people continually recapitulates -repeats - itself.

Quotes

• p. 3.    There is only childhood and death and nothing in between. ..- Gaustine
• P. 3.     The world is no longer magical.  You have been abandoned. ...- Borger
• p. 3.     Only the fleeting and ephemeral areworth  recording. ...Gaustine
• p. 49   "I dreamed that I was awake." 
• p. 51   "Words are our first teachers in death."

• p. 51   "Death is a good gardener..." 
• p. 53   "There's no God in Bulgaria, Grandma..."
• p. 56   "I am books." Perhaps my favorite quote. 
• p. 61  "It is clear that time always devours his children."
• p. 85   This narrative brought back many memories having practiced duck and cover in the classroom during my elementary years.. Having grown up during the Cold War, I reminisced with a mixture of humor and sadness. Humor because it was ridiculous to think anyone could survive the atomic bomb hiding under ones desk, and sadness because it was ridiculous to think anyone could survive the atomic bomb hiding under ones desk. The Cold War lasted way too long; a whole generation was raised in perpetual fear all across the world.
• "While I was putting on my gas-mask during our military training drills in school - which took me a whole seventeen seconds - the major kept shouting: 'That's it! You're dead...' And he shoved the stopwatch in my face.  It is not easy living thirty years after your death. "
• p. 102.  "In December, 1981, we heard about AIDS for the first time. Which,  in 1981, officially put an end to the 60's revolution.  All sexual revolutions were called off for health reasons. "
• p. 166.  " What a huge part of evolution remains locked up in the fish's silence,  what knowledge have fish accumulated over all those millennia before us! The deep,  cold storehouses of that silence.  Untouched by language. Because language channels and drains deposits of knowledge like a drill. "

        "And so,  the only storytelling creature,  man,my shuts up and steps back,

         yielding the floor to the organic and inorganic ones that have stored up

         silences until now. "

•  p.184 "....he was an abandoned soul...never go into an abandoned house or visit an abandoned person, there are only owls and snakes there..."
• p. 251 The grammar of aging: 
• "There is some sort of grammar of aging.
• Childhood and youth are full of verbs. You can't sit still...
• Later the verbs are gradually replaced by the nouns of middle age. Kids, cars, work, family...
• Growing old is an adjective. We enter into the adjectives of old age - slow, boundless, hazy, cold, or transparent like glass.
• p. 257 "In the end, old age has made everyone equal."

Books Read 2015

12-31-15:  This list includes books I have and have not reviewed

***Beasts, by Carol Joyce Oates, 2002, USA

****Proud Beggars, by Albert Cossery, 1955, translated from the French by Thomas W. Cushing with revisions and introduction by Alyson Waters, Egyptian author, written in French

*****The Private Lives Of Trees, by Alejandro Zambra, 2010, translated from the Spanish by Megan McDowell,, Chilean author.

***The Goldfinch, by Donna Tartt, 2013,  Pulitzer Prize winner, audiobook read by David Pittu, USA

*****The Obscene Bird of Night, by Jose Donoso, translated from the Spanish by Hardie St. Martin and Leonard Mades, Chilean author.

*****For a Night of Love, by Emile Zola, 2003, translated from the French by Andrew Brown

 *Against the Country, by Ben MetCalf, 2015, LibraryThing.com Early Reviewer's Book, USA

*Ripper, by Isabelle Allende, 2014, translated from the Spanish by Ollie  Brock and Frank Wynne, Audiobook read by Edoardo Brock

****The Crimson Petal and the White, by Michel Faber; originally published in England in 2002; the author was born in Holland, raised in Australia, and lives in the Scottish Highlands (at the time of this books publication).

****hausfrau, by jill alexander essbaum, LibraryThing.com Early Reviewer/s Book, USA

* * *Songs for the Missing, by Stewart O'Nan, 2008, audiobook read by Emily Janice Card,  USA

*****Evelina, by Frances Burney, first published in 1778, Epistolary Novel, England

****A Journal of the Plague Year,  by Daniel Defoe, first published in England in 1722, England

***Week in Winter, by Maeve Binchy, 2013 digital audiobook, read by Rosalyn Landor,  Irish novelist.

*****Agostino, by Alberto  Moravia, 2014, translated from the Italian by Michael Moore,  first published in 1945. Originally written in 1942, it was rejected for publication by Fascist censors.   Italian author.

****1/2   There Once Lived a Woman Who Tried to Kill Her Neighbor's Baby, Scary Fairy Tales, by Ludmilla Petrushevskaya, translated from the Russian by Keith Gessen and Anna Summers, 2009, Russian author.

***Sycamore Row,  by John Grisham,  2013, digital audiobook,  read by Michael Beck,  USA.
 
***1/2    Why I Killed My Best Friend, by Amanda Michalopoulou, 2014, translated from the Greek by Karen Emmerich, Greek. 

***The Painted Girls,  by Cathy Marie Buchanan, 2013, digital audiobook,  read by:  Cassandra Campbell (Narrator), Julia Whelan (Narrator), Danny Campbell (Narrator),  Canada

****The Bridge of San Luis Rey, by Thornton Wilder, 2003, first published in 1927, 1928 Pulitzer Prize in Fiction, USA

*Two or Three Years Later, by Ror Wolf, 2013, translated from the German by Jennifer Marquart,  Open Letter Literary Translations from the University of Rochester, German

*Life After Life,  by Kate  Atkinson, 2015, digital audiobook, read by Fenella Woolgar, England

* * * * Edge of Eternity, by Ken Follett,  2014, digital audiobook,  USA

*****Runaway Horses,  the Sea of Fertility No.  2, by Yukio Mishima, translated from the Japanese by Michael Gallagher,  first published in Tokyo 1970, Japan

***The Orphan Master's Son, by Adam Johnson, Pulitzer Prize winner,  2012, digital audiobook, Narrators: Tim Kang, Josiah D. Lee, James Kyson Lee

*****The Garlic Ballads, by Mo Yan, 1988, translated from the Chinese by Howard Goldblatt, 2012 Nobel Prize for Literature, Chinese

***The Burgess Boys, by Elizabeth Strout,  2013, digital audiobook, USA

*****The Melancholy of Resistance by László Krasznahorkai, 1989, translated from the German by George Szirtes

***The Innocent Man,  by John Grisham,  2006, digital audiobook,  USA

****City of Thieves, by David Benioff, a pen name  (author's birth name is Ronald Friedman), 2008, unabridged digital audiobook, narrated  by Ron Perlman, USA

*****The Temple of Dawn, the Sea of Fertility No. 3, by Yukio Mishima, translated from the Japanese by E. Dale Saunders and Cecilia Segawa Seigle, first published in Tokyo 1970, Japan

****The Valley of Amazement,  by Amy Tan, 2013, audiobook, narrated by Nancy Wu, Amy Tan and Joyce Bean,  American Literature

***Last Night at the Lobster by Stewart O'Nan, 2007, unabridged digital
audiobook, narrated by Jonathan Davis, American Literature

****The Lottery and Other Stories, by Shirley Jackson,  2014, unabridged digital audiobook,  The Lottery was first published in 1948, narrated by: Cassandra Campbell, Gabrielle de Cuir,Kathe Mazur, Stefan Rudnicki, Amercan Literature 

***A Spool of  Blue  Thread,  by Anne Tyler , 2015, unabridged digital audiobook,  narrated by Kimberly Farr,  American Literature 

****Our Souls at Night, by Kent Haruf, 2015, unabridged digital  audiobook,  narrated by Mark Bramhall,  American Literature

*****Dona Flor and Her Two Husbands, A Moral and Amorous Tale, by Jorge Amado, translated from the Portuguese by Harriet de Onis, first published in 1969, Brazilan author.

***Under the Wide and Starry Sky,  by Nancy Horan, 2014, digital audiobook, narrated by Kirsten Potter , USA

**Gray Mountain,  by John Grisham, 2014, digital audiobook, narrated by Catherine Taber,  USA

*****The Palm-Wine Drinker anzd My Life in the Bush of Ghosts, by Amos Tutuola, 1953 and 1954, respectively, Nigerian

***Stationary Bike, by Stephen King,  2006, digital audiobook,  USA


**** The Physics of Sorrow, by Georgi Gospodinov, original published in 2011and translation published in 2015, translated from the Bulgarian by Angela Rodel, Bulgarian

**1/2The Last Nude, by Ellis Avery, 2012, Digital audiobook, narrated by Barbara Caruso and Therese Plummer, winner of 2013 Stonewall Book Award for Literature and Golden Crown Literary Award for Historical Fiction (2013),

****Misery, by Stephen King, 2009, digital audio book, narrated by Lindsey Crouse, USA

***A Pleasure and a Calling , by Phil Hogan, 2014, audiobook, narrated by Michael Paige, USA

***1/2Rochester Knockings, a Novel of the Fox Sisters,  by Hubert Haddad, 2015, translated from the French by Jennifer Grotz, French

*****The Blind Owl, by  Sadegh Hedayat, 2010, translated from the Iranian by D.P. Costello,  Iranian Literature 

***Benediction, by Kent Haruf, 2014, digital audiobook,  narrated by Mark Bramhall,  USA

***Charleston,  by John Jakes, 2011, audiobook narrated by George Guidall,  USA

****All My Sons, a play, by Arthur Miller, first published in 1947, digital audiobook, narrated by Julie Harris, James Farentino & Arye Gross , PulitzerPrize winning author. 

***The Perfectionist by Joyce Carol Oates , 2009 (first published in 1993, Princeton University), digital audiobook, L.A. Theatre Works , Audio Theatre Collection, USA

****All the Light We Cannot See,  by Anthony Doerr,  Audiobook,  narrated by Jack Appelman,  Pulitzer Prize winning author,  USA

****Appointment in Samarra,  by John O'Hara, first published in 1934, USA

***In Wilderness, a Novel, by Diane Thomas, 2015, LibraryThing.Com Early Reviewer's book, USA

12/2015-16 *Currently reading,  Medicine Walk, by Richard Wagamse, audiobook, Canadian Literature

12/2015 16 *Currently reading And After Many Days, by Jowhar 
Ile, an Advanced Reader's Edition via LibraryThing.com,  to be published February, 2016, Nigerian author, fits publication in USA.

*****Dona Flor and Her Two Husbands, A Moral and Amorous Tale by Jorge Amado

• Dona Flor and Her Two Husbands, A Moral and Amorous Tale by Jorge Amado 
• Brazilian Literature 
• Originally published in Portuguese in 1966. First published in English in 1969. 
• Jorge Amado: 1912-2001, Brazilian
• Jorge draws on Afro-Brazilian Folklore and rituals. 
• candomble: a syncretic religion practiced in Bahia; a combination of West African religions and Catholicism.  
• syncretism: combining several distinct religions and practices in union. Syncretism is to religion what eclecticism is to art. 

Jorge Amado's earlier life as a communist militant who won the Stalin Peace Prize and edited a literary supplement for the Nazi political newspaper, Meio-Dia, threw me off balance. I learned of these associations after I had already read and enjoyed Dona Flor. For whatever reason(s), he did leave the communist party and all its political associations in 1954, when he was 42. Still, the Stalin and Nazi connections do not sit comfortably with me.  On the flip-side, in his earlier works, Amado wrote critically of landowners cruelty towards plantation workers, such as he had experienced as a boy on his cocoa farm. Given his beliefs, it would be hard to imagine Amado fully understood what drove the Nazi party. Regarding communism, he may have been caught up in the lofty ideals that were never practiced.  Whatever the details, I will discuss this book with unbiased eyes since I did like it and do not know the specifics of his connections. Whatever they are, innocent or not, they do not change the quality of Amado's writing.

Setting
Salvador, Bahia - Brazil, 1940's

Genre
The entire story is told with a mix of folklore, realism, comedy and magical realism - an eclectic blending. 

Plot
Dona Flor's internal conflict: passion vs. stability, a dissolute life vs an honorable one. This could also be seen as a conflict between the social classes - the poor vs. the rich. Vadinho represents the dissolute life filled with passion and penury, Dr. Teodoro symbolizes a life of honor, stability and financial security, but void of passion. 

Characters - Amado has a gift for developing characters . They are full-bodied and three-dimensional, complete with individual affectations and unique personalities. There are so many characters,  I have limited my list to the central three. The novel revolves around their lives, despite how far and wide Amado's characters are cast. 

• Dona Flor: protagonist 
• Vadinho- central character and Dona Flor's first husband who dies young from his dissolute habits and returns as a ghost on Dona Flor's and Dr. Teodoro's first wedding anniversary. During their marriage, Dona Flor experienced a life of angst because it was extremely unstable.  Vadinho  did not work, only gambled; Dona Flor worked to keep them financially afloat; and Vadinho was infidel, he was a womanizer who loved whores and loose women and stayed out late or did not come home at all. This life kept Dona Flor in a constant state of anxiety with intermittent  moments of happiness played out in the couples bedroom. Despite all of this, Dona Flor was and is passionately in love with Vadinho.
• Dr. Teodoro - a local pharmacist and Dona Flor's second husband, he provides Dona Flor with a worry-free stable life of love, financial security and total fidelity, yet it is void of passion. Everything they do is pre-planned and measured, including sex (observed on Wednesday's &  2x's on Saturday's). Dona Flor becomes friends and/or associates of her husband's numerous elite and educated friends, providing her with a new world of classical music (via her husbands band), boring lectures on medicine and scheduled nights at the movies. Life is good, in a quietly boring way.
• Other characters: I am adding a few addition character descriptions to illustrate the breadth and range of Amado's skill at characterization.
• Dona Rozilda - Dona Flor's meddling mother, a virago and wannabe social climber via her children.
• A termagant with a tongue like a knife. 
• When she was not tormenting someone, she felt empty and frustrated. 

• Eduardo - nicknamed the Prince of the Widows or Our Lord of Calvary; a swindler and thief who tricks widows into either leading him to their money and jewels (to steal) or by giving them to him outright. This he does in cahoots with his current lover, Lu.  Meaning, she knows what he does for a living, and only cares to the extent that it makes her envious of the women he woos, so to speak, in order to rob her blind.
• To his jealous Lu, Can't you understand that it is a business, a financial enterprise, nothing more. I couldn't care less about the widow's tail, my little jackass, it is her money and whatever jewelry she may have.
• Sugar, today I storm the fortress, enter the living-room, and before you can say scat I'll be in bed with the widow.

Quotes and Notes

• Amado is a master at depicting passion with poetic lucidity, a theme which permeates this novel. Here, it is portrayed via Dona Flor :

• “Prone on the iron bed, Dona Flor shuddered. That night the gall turned to honey, once more pain became supreme pleasure; never had she been a mare so in heat covered by her potent stallion, such an eager bitch, a slave submitting to her own debauchery, a woman pursuing all the paths of desire, fields of flowers and sweetness, forests of damp shadows and forbidden ways, to their final conclusion. A night to enter the narrowest, most tightly closed doors, a night to surrender the last bastion of her modesty, Glory hallelujah! When gall is turned into honey and suffering is strange, exquisite, divine pleasure, a night to give and to receive.”

• Gossip - the demeaning quality of gossip for both the giver and receiver suffuses Amado's novel, blending minimized humanity with comedy.
• "Who is going to take the trouble to bear good tidings.  For that there is no hurry or impatience. Nobody goes running into the street for that. Only when there is bad news. To carry that there is no shortage of messengers; there are those who are willing to make the greatest sacrifices, give up their work, interrupt their rest, sacrificing themselves completely. To bring bad news - what a delightful treat!"
• "And is there anything in the world as splendid and exciting, any display comparable to the suffering of others?" 

• Amado's ability to capture a scene is only second to actually being there, such is the quality of his visual and emotional language. Whether describing a home's interior, a town's main thorough-fair, or the beauty of the moonlight on the water, he is a master.

• The full moon creased the dark, thick water of the sea, as black as oil, the water of the gulf in quiet gentleness...An inland sea, gently calm, listless, still, with a gently breeze blowing between the jackfruit and breadfruit trees. A sea of repose and peace. 

• Not the ocean-sea, beyond the bar, fierce and dangerous, with waves and underwater currents, deceptive tides, the open sea where the winds blow free, wild tempests-detouring on the way to the little houses of assignation in Itapoa, where love bursts out in hallelujah. A sea of boundless violence; not this sweet scent of jasmine, but of high tide, the bold smell of sargassum, of algae and oysters, of salt. 

•  On Dona Flor's birthday, Vadinho allows Flor to visit the Palace, one of his higher-end playgrounds where he gambles and whores, a place he deems unfit for his wife. Her perception of this forbidden territory captures her experience wonderfully:
• Dona Flor moved silently, contrite, like one who has penetrated a secret temple, forbidden to the uninitiated. At last she had managed to reach and enter the mysterious territory where Vadinho was millionaire and beggar, king and slave. She knew she had barely touched upon this nocturnal realm, the mere fringe of this sea of darkness...Along these paths Vadinho moved completely at ease; Dona Flor, before the roulette wheel, gingerly touched the hem of this world. 

•  Dona Flor's internal conflict between passion and stability, penury and financial stability are central to the novel's theme. Can you have both, or must you sacrifice one for the other?
• Happiness leaves no history. A happy life is not the subject for a novel.
• Dona Flor, in a letter to her sister Rosalia on the eve of the first anniversary of her marriage to the druggist said she had nothing of importance to tell her; such was the balanced and boring life she was living with the pharmacist. Letters to her sister when married to Vadinho were filled with stories of angst, whoring and penury - stories for a novel.
• When something of substance happens,  it is nearly always unpleasant. 
• Happiness is pretty boring, hard to take-in a word, a pain in the neck. 
• When Vadinho returns in ghost form, Dona Flor's life is turned upside down. She was obsessed with the idea of being a virtuous wife, but could not avoid her love and passionate feelings for Vadinho. Flor considers with angst: Who ever heard of a wife with two husbands? Why is everybody two different people? Why is it necessary to be torn between two loves? Why does the heart hold at the same time two emotions contradictory and opposed?
• Vadinho response to Dona Flor's struggle: I am the husband of poor Dona Flor, the one who comes to stir up your longing and provoke your desire, hidden in the depths of your being, your modesty.  He (Dr. Teodoro) is the husband of Madame Dona Flor, who protects your virtue, your honor, your respect among people. He is your outward face, I your inner, the lover whom you don't know how and can't bear to evade. We are your two husbands, your two faces, your yes and no. To be happy you need both of us....Now you are Dona Flor, complete, as you should be.
• Amado expands on a parallel concept, one that is being played out alongside Dona Flor's story - gambling. Gamblers always wish for a windfall, until their wish is granted, as it is when the ghost of Vadinho appears in support of his friends. 
• That was winning, not gambling. The emotion of gambling is the not knowing, the risk, the fury at losing, the joy of guessing the right number, winning and losing... What he did not want was that miraculous good luck, profit without amusement, struggle, pleasure. Human nature is like that.
• It is similar to Dona Flor's experience. Her two husbands signified two extremes- struggle vs. bland contentment. With Dr. Teodoro, she did not have to win her husband's attentions, struggle for money, overcome jealousies such as she experienced with Vadinho's infidelities and time spent gambling. Yet Vadinho had love with passion. He made Dona Flor feel to the depth of her being. With Dr. Teodoro, everything was measured and planned, even sex. Dona Flor needed stability and a sense of propriety, but only to an extent.
• Amado provides Dona Flor with an unusual solution. Why choose between two husbands when she can have both. This way she can live with both honor and passion. Through the vehicle of magical realism she can live with Dr. Teodoro and the apparition of Vadinho; each one providing her with the necessary ingredients for a fully balanced life. 
• Is Amado stating reality with stability is void of magic? Do we all possess these dual parts within our conscious or semi-conscious selves - a combination and desire for the naughty and the nice? I think so. Yet these terms are relative and specific to each one of us. My naughty may be another persons nice and vice versa. But that starts a whole other discussion.

Amado has created an alluring story - a must read!

***Last Night at the Lobster by Stewart O'Nan

Digital audiobook, 2007
Narrated by Jonathan Davis