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In Sweden in the ‘50s, Lapp children were sent to a school for “nomads” where they faced constant punishment from a nightmarish housemother. They were barred from speaking their native tongue, Sami, the language of reindeer herders. The trauma they experienced there shaped their subsequent years, as we follow a handful of students into adulthood. Else-Maj becomes fiercely Christian; Anne-Risten hides her heritage; bully Nilsa seethes with anger, and single Marge adopts a child from afar. It’s a riveting novel, echoing the lamentable way we treated indigenous children here in America. I listened to it on CD and really appreciated the narrator’s accent and the richness of languages in the ear.
In this extraordinary memoir, the author plumbs the depths of helplessness. After a fall in which he tumbled from sitting and hit the floor, he was left without the use of his legs and his hands. But he had a lot to say, so family members wrote it down and we’re privy to his interior thoughts on a wide range of subjects as well as reflections on health care in Italy where it happened, and then back in England, his primary residence. I’m drawn to books like this because I’m fascinated by the ways people with courage and skill can deal with great limitations. Kureishi certainly fills the bill.
I loved his novel, This is Happiness, and here we’re back in that quirky little Irish town at Christmastime. The local doctor, Jack, is essential to the denizens but stays at a remove from village social life. He worries constantly about his single daughter Ronnie, who serves as his assistant. An abandoned baby is brought to him, and he sees this is a chance for Ronnie to reconnect with love after heartbreak. They try to keep the baby hidden, which is impossible in their house which also serves as the medical office. If she’s not married, the state could take the baby away. So Jack comes up with an ill-conceived scheme which fails but (spoiler alert)—well, we all want it to work out and it does. Sometimes dense with local lore and language. A treat.
That’s actually the name of a street in a hard-scrabble neighborhood in Brooklyn, but you won’t find any saints there. Instead, the book is like a Greek tragedy clothed in Italian American meanness and messiness. Risa is married to Sav, a two-timing abuser. When he brandishes a gun and says he’s going off with someone else, she panics, hits him with a skillet, and kills him. Baby Fab is on the floor, her sister Guilia is there too. They call on their friend Chooch from across the street for help and manage to bury the body upstate. This starts a life of lies that plays out with more inevitable tragedy, especially when teenage Fab starts to search for his father, whom everyone assumed just ran off. Vivid, juicy, heartrending.
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