Norway and Sweden: "Out Stealing Horses," Per Petterson and "Astrid & Veronika," Linda Olsson

Two countries, twinned on the same landmass. Two books, pendants in fact, to use a metaphor from the arts. One deals with a pair of men; the other with a pair of women. I didn't begin with the intent to treat them together, but the books fell out that way. Astrid & Veronika appeared on the clearance shelf at Half Price Books a few months ago; and Out Stealing Horses was the Per Petterson title available in our public library. Sometimes happenstance leads to neat discoveries. Each book evokes a sense of place extremely vividly and tells the age-old tale of adjusting to the difficult circumstances of life. Each leaves the reader with some sense, but not a complete sense, of closure.

Both of these works have a frame story. Petterson's 2007 work is a classic "coming of age" story set within the larger frame of a voyage/quest as an 67-year old man seeks peace in the forest he hasn't known since boyhood. I could argue that it is the better book because it is more complex. Linda Olsson's 2005 novel, her first, is a "coming to terms" story set within a larger frame of humankind's mutual inter-connectedness, even when we want to deny that we are, in fact, linked with other people. In this book, a woman near 80 reveals her life's secrets to her new, much younger neighbor, and each shares tales of tremendous loss.

In each book, one character moves to a new home intentionally isolated from others, except for one other person across the way or down the road. Each pair of houses--one an hour's drive or so from Oslo (Norway), the other outside of Stockholm (Sweden)--sits on the edge of a forest, near a lake, within a short drive of a village with a general store/gossip center.

Isolation is a plot necessity. Without it Trond, the narrator of Horses, would not have spoken with his nearest neighbor, Lars, and Astrid, the older woman, would not have checked on Veronkia after not seeing her for a few days. By connecting with the other, each unleashes the memories and stories that form a substantial portion of the books.

Each book uses a similar structure, alternating between past and present. Each tells stories from the past from different people's viewpoints. We hear Trond's boyhood neighbor Franz tell the 15-year old Trond some truths about his father. We hear what Veronika's father said to her when they last met. We infer from her words how Astrid coped with her father's mis-use of her when she was a girl. Even Lars, almost mute in Trond's life, has a short narrative about his existence from age 10 to 20, being responsible for the family farm in his older brother's absence.

Descriptions of forest, snow, light, and even the scent of the area abound in both works.

In Horses, which begins in November with Trond meeting his neighbor:

"There had been days and nights of rain and wind and incessant roaring in the pines and the spruce, but now there was absolute stillness in the forest, not a shadow moving, and we stood still, my neighbour and I, staring into the dark." (p. 8)

In A&V, which begins with Veronika's arrival in March, under dark skies:

"She lay still, watching the shade of the ceiling change, her ears alert. The sounds of darkness were faint but familiar. She could hear the snow adjusting to the slowly rising temperature, the wind preparing to pick up, the rustling of small bodies scuttling across the hard crust of snow that had thawed and frozen over again." (p. 11)

Then later that year, in Sweden:

"Summer arrived abruptly...The birch trees went from sheet pale purple through shy green to full summer exuberance in a few days, and the delicate bluebells covered the meadows with a quivering brush of purple. The bird cherry trees blossomed and filled the air with perfume over a few intense days, then the petals fell like snow." (p. 88)

In one of his memories, Trond recounts a horse camping trip he made with his father in the summer of 1948:

"...we made up branches and twigs into two soft beds under the cliff, and it smelled good and strong...We fetched our blankets and lit a bonfire...and sat on each side of the flames to eat...we turned the horses loose. From where we sat by the fire we could only just hear them moving around on the soft forest floor...but we could not see them clearly for it was August now and the evenings were darker." (p. 212-213)

In their own late summer in this century, Astrid and Veronika set off for lingon berries:

"The dark forest gradually thinned as they reached higher ground. Eventually it gave way to tall pines, seemingly nourished only the the white moss that covered their roots. The trunks stretched straight and branchless toward the sky and the air was filled with the smell of resin and pine needles. The moss was dotted with small red berries and they began to pick. The berries grew in clusters...Veronika focused on her task, the sun warm on her back now. (p. 215)

I learned from these books that if you don't live in a city, it is imperative to know how to cook food and possibly heat your home with a wood stove, how to chop the wood and stack it correctly, and how to read weather signs for rain or snow. Living in one's mind also seems important, as these characters face potential days and nights of isolation, and their lives are joyous, at least sometimes, because of their memories of their own lives and of the stories of others they carry with them.

Peru: "Who Killed Palomino Molero?" by Mario Vargas Llosa

In my imagination, I see Vargas Llosa and de Recacoechea in a bar sipping pisco and making bets about which can write a better noir novel, or whose novel will be picked up for film rights, or which one does a better job telling a story about his country in less than 175 pages. Since Who Killed Palomino Molero? appeared in 1987, and de Recacoechea's Andean Express came out in 2000, it is more likely that the Bolivian writer paid homage to Vargas Llosa. As a reader in 2013, however, I experienced something similar to double-feature at the movies.

This photo of Talara is courtesy of TripAdvisor

Vargas Llosa's book takes place in the very north of Peru in the early 1950s. The plot revolves around two police officers in Talara seeking the truth behind the grisly murder of a young man posted to the nearby airbase. While some reviews say it is a tightly crafted murder mystery, I have to confess that I knew who did it as soon as we meet the offender -- and I knew why. If you, too, have a deep background in Elizabeth George, Ruth Rendell, or Laura Roh Rowland, this might not be the intellectual puzzle you seek, but it is still worth the time to read as a psychological study of power, if nothing else.

Talara is on the coast near oil fields, with the airbase, and serves as the headquarters for an administrative district, all of which play a role in the story. Descriptions of life of the time appear sparingly amidst the dialogue that moves the tale along. Here, the police lieutenant and his assistant head to a cafe for their dinner.

"They walked out, locking the station door...There was a full moon. The bluish light of the sky illuminated the street. They walked in silence, waving and nodding in response to the greetings shouted to them from the families congregated in the doorways. Off in the distance, above the throbbing surf, they could hear the loudspeakers from the outdoor movie--Mexican voices, a woman weeping, background music." (p. 115)

While the author might or might not have intended commentary on gender relations, women are depicted as victims and as manipulative objects of men's desires: a grieving mother, a child-like waif, a voluptuous cafe owner. To be fair, the male characters, except for one, also have very little independent agency, being molded into specific roles by their place in the social hierarchy and their degree of authority over others.

For a glimpse of life in mid-20th century Peru, for the reality of the social divisions between "purebloods" (those presumably of 100% Spanish descent) and everyone else, and for some descriptions of the landscape, this is a good, quick read. The book contains subtle political commentary, as one expects in Vargas Llosa, about the abuses of power and the pure-heartedness of the common people. One summary says it is about the difficult life of an honest man in a corrupt society. Indeed, the lieutenant is a cop who insists on paying for his meals and in the end, he pays for that integrity.

South Africa: "Kafka's Curse" by Achmat Dangor

After reading this book, I've decided I must read several more books from South Africa, including at least one by a black writer and another by someone who self-identifies as white, and preferably at least one written recently. Kafka's Curse appeared in 1997 and was hailed by some as among the first "post-apartheid" literature, although it deals entirely with apartheid. As with post-Nazi Germany, I think it will take generations for South African writers to wrestle with the realities and pains of their country's past and some of the nation's present, as well.

Dangor writes of a period leading up to 1994 and considers relations between so-called "white" and those considered "colored"* according to the labels created in 1948 by apartheid. A central character begins life as a Muslim and reflects,

"In those days--the old South Africa, you remember?...Reality, then, was exactly what you saw. Nothing more than 'face value'. I was fair, and why not, my grandmother was Dutch. This oppressive country had next-to-Nazis in government, yet had a place, a begrudged place but a place nevertheless, for Jews. Can you believe it? For that eternally persecuted race?
  Because they were white." (p. 33)

To advance in his chosen profession (architecture) and leave the impoverished township to which "non-whites" were restricted, Muslim Omar Khan becomes Jewish Oscar Kahn with the complicity and assistance of his wheeling-dealing father. However, at his mother's death years later, brother Malik shows up to take Omar/Oscar to the funeral and sets in train a series of unmaskings that defy description.

The jacket flap uses the term "magic realism," which is apt for at least portions of the book, but for other parts, assuming it is ONE story and not separate stories about characters with the same names, the more apt term might be screenplay. In sections dealing with a character named Amina, parts of the book reminded me of Robert Altman's 1992 movie The Player.

My bewilderment with continuity and relationships began before I even started the text, as I scrutinized the family trees in the beginning. Lines denoting parentage make it seem that a brother marries his sister. A man whose dates appears with his wife's family and in his own dies in two different years. In the third family depicted, Ibrahim Schroeder marries a woman with the Arabic first name of Rehana, which is certainly possible but struck me as odd for circa 1925.

I am not the only reader who is confused. This review from The New York Times also bemoans the "muddle" of families and loves. The Times's reviewer considers the tales to be separate, each dealing with a metamorphosis, building on the Kafka title. Chapters definitely deal with adaptations that people make to cope with ever-changing circumstances. Throughout, physical violence, psychological abuse or perversion taints human relationships: marriage, parent-child, sibling, lover, employer-employee, and even causal passers-by who are swept into sea while sitting on the embankment in Cape Town.

Kafka's Curse revealed what must be some of the constant stress and feelings of self-loathing with which people had to live during the period of apartheid. The novel also sensitized me to the vastness of the country. A family travels 18 hours by train from Cape Town to Johannesburg; people can tell where you live based on vowel pronunciation; and there are vivid contrasts between the extensive coastline and the dry interior. This book does not deal with contemporary South Africa, the HIV/AIDS crises (one in 10 people carry the virus, with a disproportionate share among Blacks), or any of the political, economic, or social developments since 1994. For those, I will need a more recent work.


* Dangor has just two minor characters in this work who would be considered "Black" under those laws.

Tahiti: "Frangipani" by Célestine Vaite

When I stumbled upon a Tahitian author writing about mother and daughter relations, I headed to the library just as fast as I could. By some lights, Tahiti doesn't qualify for this project since it is still tied to France, but I decided to add it anyway. The novel Frangipani depicts a period in Tahitian life of adjustment to changing rules, especially as they relate to options available to women. 

Célestine Vaite writes of Materena and her daughter Leilani. Materena knows the ancestors and the many, many rules of traditional Tahitian life, including how to greet relatives (whom you invariably encounter whenever you go anywhere), how to conduct Welcome to the World rituals, what to say in the Welcome to Womanhood talk, and more. But she doesn't know why it doesn't snow in Tahiti, how to calculate the diameter of a circle, or how to ask a doctor if an illness is contagious. Materena is "Old Tahiti" and she is raising Leilani in the "New Tahiti," with education and confidence in herself, along with a smidgen of reverence for the old ways.

We watch Leiliani from before birth to about age 20, as she grows within her immediate family with two brothers and in an extended family with innumerable aunties, uncles, and cousins, plus grandmothers, neighbors, and more. When Leiliani is about 16, Materena seeks counsel from the wisest woman she knows, the Virgin Mary, Understanding Woman.

"She's here because she's that close to throwing her daughter into the street!...it's not natural for a mother to want to throw her daughter into the street...once linked with the umbilical cord, we're linked for the eternity. But...
  Aue, Virgin Mary, what is the challenge you're giving me? She's pushing me, that girl, she's doing everything for me to. . .to. . .want to shove her clothes and her books in plastic bags and kick her into the street. Then she's going to see where not respecting your mother takes you." (p. 132)

As her daughter matures and seeks her own path to self-fulfillment, Materena looks for another purpose, besides motherhood, and finds it in a non-traditional way -- she becomes a radio host. She says on air,

"I'm so proud to have been born a woman...I'm calling on all the women listening right now to share their stories on the radio for other women to learn something and be inspired. People say, 'I've got nothing to say,' but that's not true. Every single woman has something to say. A story. A story about mistakes, obstacles overcome, discoveries, a story. A story that will help another woman take a step forward. A story that will warn another woman before she takes a step backward. A story to reassure all of us that we are not all alone. . ."  (p. 284)

The book itself is a response to Materena's request for stories. Each chapter is a little story of its own and they string together like the traditional shell necklace given when someone leaves the island.

As for learning about Tahiti, I was astonished to see the extent to which this family relied on imported canned goods from the "Chinese store," rather than local fish or produce. At various online sites, I see this is not unusual for Pacific islands, possibly because steep volcanic hillsides mean little arable land. Less surprising, as it is similar to what I saw when I lived in France, is that Materena's man, Pito, works in a factory and spends his non-working hours hanging with his copains (buddies), drinking, or watching le foot (soccer). This seems perfectly normal to Materena, although teaches her sons how to do useful things at home, including their own laundry after they are 14 and doing things a mother shouldn't have to know about. Perhaps the least surprising thing I read about was the easy acceptance of sex and sexuality. This is consistent with what Margaret Mead told us (although some dispute) about Samoa and what Paul Gauguin depicted about Tahiti 100+ years ago. There are glimpses of coupling in a bar, in a car, in a garden, and elsewhere, with shame associated only with men's adultery (the women in this story were one-man women). Even a person born as George who lives life as Georgette is accepted as she is and incorporated into the women's rituals.  

One more thing. For photographers, the accepted images of Tahiti pretty much all show only a vacation paradise, with nubile women and tattooed, muscular men if there are any people at all. It was extremely hard, even using extensions for France, Australia, or other sites, to find pictures that depict anything like what might be "normal" life for an average-income resident of the island. Even the real estate ads at ".pf" sites show mostly luxurious vacation homes with ocean views, swimming pools, and deluxe amenities. The book depicts a clan that lives with a view of the airport in homes that are described as "fibro shacks" (mobile homes in the U.S.?), with colorful curtains but definitely not on the tourist itinerary. 

Poland: "Castorp" by Paweł Huelle

This book is set in Danzig, the name by which Gdansk was known when it was governed by the German Empire in the late 19th and 20th centuries. Castorp depicts a bygone era with slightly rose-colored lenses and it is the "prequel" to Thomas Mann's Magic Mountain. The author, Paweł
Huelle describes a city in about 1904 that was still dominated by shipping, as it had been centuries before as part of the Hanseatic League.  Here is the protagonist Hans Castorp arriving after a North Sea and Baltic Sea voyage from his home in Hamburg toward the university where he wants to study the family business of shipbuilding:

"As the Aquarius sailed along the middle of the canal, passing the spire of Danzig Fortress he had no trouble recognising the characteristic ring of fortifications...there was a true revelation awaiting him around the bend of the Mottlau [a river], where the left wall of the waterway was lined with granaries very similar to the Hamburg variety, while on the right there were mediaeval [sic] gateways, towers and the fronts of narrow little tenements, with a huge, squat crane pushing in between them, probably built here in the year Christopher Columbus sailed for the New World." (p.31-32).

We follow shy, self-effacing Hans as he enrolls in the then-brand new Polytechnic Institute, deals with his very odd landlady, and eventually, develops an infatuation with an older, "exotic" woman he sees at a seaside resort. If you've read the Magic Mountain, this last theme will seem familiar. Castorp likes his food, and Huelle describes meals so well that one becomes hungry while reading. He likes Maria Mancini cigars and pursuit of this particular brand is a factor in the action, which is very slow-paced. He enjoys a good porter (beer) with a meal. These themes pre-figure the Castorp who appears in Mann's novel, which is set a few years later (and is several hundred pages longer).

Huelle also briefly touches on social class and relations. Danzig at the time had many ethnic German residents, who looked down on the Poles, who in turn looked down on the Kashubians, whose ancestral lands are to the west and north of the city. Russians, especially Jews, were leaving their homeland, and their presence in the city is also noted. The harbor, of course, has sailors from the world over, a fact Castorp enjoys as he listens to them during his trips to a port tavern.

For me, the real pleasure in the book came from descriptions of the city. Castorp tours on foot and by bicycle in all seasons. We read of autumnal leaves and grey skies; perfumed breezes and bird song in spring; and hot beach sand around the time of the Feast of St. John the Baptist. Castorp views the town hall spire, historic gates and markets; he dines or takes coffee in various cafes; he travels by the tram and takes the boat crossing to a seaside spa. Each action is described closely by Huelle, so we hear, see, smell and almost taste and touch what our hero experiences.

The book, nominally about a man, is also about a place. Neither made it to our era. The Danzig of of 1905 did not survive the World Wars and while it has been rebuilt, it seems to me that part of Huelle's point is that the past of a place cannot be recaptured any more than the life of a man can be saved from the fates.*

* Mann's character leaves the Swiss sanatorium for World War I, and we presume, death in the army.

Uruguay: "The Tree of Red Stars" by Tessa Bridal

What does it take for someone to become a revolutionary?  Tessa Bridal gives us a long look at a young woman's growth from privileged daughter of the landowning class to someone actively protesting the military dictatorship that ran her country from 1968 to 1984. The Tree of Red Stars is a poinsettia -- which can grow to 4 meters (about 13 feet) in its native climate -- but it is also a symbol of protest.

The narrator, Magdalena, perches in a poinsettia tree in front of her house from age 5 onward. From there she and her bosom friend Emilia learn almost everything of importance in their lives. They spot the arrival of Gabriela, who lives in a hillside shack with her children and comes down to the city to collect the cast-offs of the wealthy. They hear about Magda's much older cousins and their plans for the future during a period of 400% plus inflation. They watch the handsome boys--later young men--of the neighborhood as they find (or are forced into) their place in the relatively small society (3.4 million people now in the entire country).

They fear whatever it is that keeps Emilia's mother, Lilita, out late at night and learn that the neighbor Francisca has guns hidden in her house. They befriend Cora, whose parents were saved from the Nazis in Holland and settled in this new land, where they just want to be left alone.

Magda, as a young adult, meets up with Cora again and learns even more about the resistance movement she has covertly observed.

" ...I felt like a person marooned on a desert island, receiving, instead of sending, bottled messages. A whole underlayer of society, of people working to change the world, had been revealed to me. I felt that Gabriela, Lilita, señora Francisca, the students who helped after Che's speech had been trying to tell me something...Everything I'd heard and seen until that moment started falling into place...and I didn't want to just absorb it any more. I wanted to act. I started to understand that if people like me stopped to think about why Gabriela lived as she did, about why a woman like señora Francisca hid guns in her house, about why Lilia's friend Juan was tortured, about why a group of students would be chased by policemen ... if we only stopped long enough to think about such things, perhaps the world would change. I was young enough to think I could change it..." (p. 211-212) 

Magda, for family reasons, had been sent to a school where she learns English and this puts her in a position to work for the U.S. Information Service circa 1970. While there, she learns of the horrors committed by a man whose kidnapping and execution play a central role in the story. This event in the novel is based on a real event (as is a later kidnapping and release of a British official). The man was a sheriff in Richmond, Indiana in the 1950s and was recruited by the CIA and/or FBI to train military and police forces in Latin American countries in torture and "interrogation techniques."

The turning point for Magda from casually political Uruguayan into enraged revolutionary comes when she sees the effects of this man's work. Her reaction is an affirmation of the statement that all politics are personal.

In some ways, this novel depicts a 20th century "Great Game" played out in Latin America between the United States and Soviet Union, while each sought to keep the other from being "the Power" in the region. We read Magda's observations of the U.S. while living in Michigan as an exchange student and her commentary about the death of Salvador Allende in Chile.  We see the tensions of a landowning class that sells its beef and mineral rights to the North and the survival efforts of people as the country is weighted down by international debt and more.

It is also a loving description of daily life, national traditions, historical events and more that shape the Uruguayan culture. This includes everything from how the maid serves tea and the proper way to drink mate (a traditional infusion) to relations between women and men and parents and children. The chapters are like wooden beads, each self-contained as a very short story, but linking together to make a strand that connects generations as Magda searches for justice for her country and for her love.

Morocco: "Secret Son" by Laila Lalami

After reading about wealth in Pakistan, I wondered how ordinary people or poor people viewed those who were in power there. This book provides a bit of an answer.

In Secret Son by Laila Lalami, Youssef El Mekki is raised in near-poverty by his presumably widowed mother. As he enters university, he discovers that his father is, in fact, a quite-alive philanderer of the upper class. Youssef manages to meet his father, Nabil Amrani, at the same time that Nabil learns that his only known child, a 20-year old daughter, is creating her own life in the U.S. Thus, Nabil is casting about for someone to inherit his portion of his family's hospitality empire.

Youssef moves to his father's private apartment. He is at first very uneasy in this world of wealth but becomes accustomed to at least some of the privileges: material goods, the ability to attract young women and take them out (and take them to bed), and more. Yet he longs for his childhood home, his three comrades from the old neighborhood, and his mother's daily presence.

In time, Nabil offers Youssef a ground-level job at a luxury hotel. But Youssef declines because he is still in school.

"'It's for your own good,' [his father] said at last. 'You know as well as I do that your university degree alone won't lead anywhere in this country.'
     Again there was that needless reminder that, despite all the effort he might put into it, his schooling would amount to nothing. Real jobs were for people who went to higher institutes, or engineering school, or medical school--or anywhere abroad. For Youssef, there was only the prospect of a degree and maybe a third-rate job, if he was lucky."

After a year or so of juggling work and school, Youssef is suddenly turned out of the job and the apartment. He returns to the slum and in his despair about losing his father and his future in one blow, he is recruited by the only entity in the community that is trying to bring any kind of change. "The Party" provides a medical clinic, distributes free food, runs a community center with a tea shop and shows movies (followed by religious lectures).  Hatim, leader of "The Party" says,

"Our community's fall into disgrace started with our political leaders...They promised to build schools and hospitals, create jobs for the young, and improve our economy. Of course they did none of that. The years come and go, governments follow one another, but our literacy rate stays the same, our hospitals remain ill equipped, and our economy still depends on agriculture and tourism. Like sheep, our foreign-educated elite want to do whatever France or America wants them to do, without regard for whether it is good for the rest of us...They are a small number of people, those decadent few, but they are the real obstacles to progress."

Hatim demands that Youssef decide his loyalties--to his (deceitful but loving) mother and all she represents, including a suddenly revealed Berber heritage; or to his (corrupt and distant) father and all he represents. Youssef decides, with irreversible consequences.

"It occurred suddenly to Youssef that his innocence was irrelevant. It served no purpose in the overall plot ... He could see clearly now that he had been a small actor in a big production directed by the state."

Youssef likens himself repeatedly to film heroes, yet he realizes finally that scriptwriters are his mother, who controls his life story, and his father, who comes up with plan after plan that suits HIS needs but never considers Youssef's potential as a writer or reporter (his father has connections to an important journalist) or in any role other than "the son" to train to inherit. Hatim, the party leader, works on the plot, too. The right to self-determination never was Youssef's.

In addition to state-level constraints and societal expectations of individual actors, the theme of familial control has recurred in my reading as well. The uncle in Nervous Conditions is assigned a role that he seems to like by birth order and social pressure. The women in Masks create an elaborate charade to continue a family "bloodline."  The terrorist in House of Splendid Isolation acts in part for revenge for family. The grown children in Children of the Jacaranda Tree continue the struggles begun by their parents 30 years earlier, perhaps sometimes against their own preferences for an easier way.

As someone raised in the U.S. in the 1960s and 1970s, when it seemed that except for the small biases imposed on short women, my right to self-determination was nearly limitless, it is important that I learn more about how people succumb to, cope with, or break out of these combined forces of state power, social pressure, and family obligations.