Book Review: THE ASSASSINATION OF MARGARET THATCHER by Hilary Mantel

The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher by Hilary Mantel
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

After finishing Hilary Mantel's historical doorstopper novels on the French Revolution and Thomas Cromwell in Tudor times, I was curious how the great author would tackle short stories set in contemporary times.

The argument can be made that Hilary Mantel is a horror writer! But not in a supernatural spooky way. Hers is the horror present in the dark deeds and desires of normal people, make scarier with the idea that these terrible things can indeed happen.

The ten stories ring of truth, showcasing her skill for detail and incredibly rich texture. Mantel practically inhabits different personalities and changes her voice accordingly: the Caucasian wife who has to fend off the advances of a neighbor in Saudi Arabia, the woman whose house is picked by a would-be IRA assassin, the vampire who works in Harley Street.

I was particularly struck by WINTER BREAK (what would you do if your taxi driver does a hit-and-run and you're not sure if it was an animal that was struck down?) and THE LONG QT (a married man faces unexpected consequences when his wife discovers him with another woman). They were only 11 and 8 pages long but BOOM! The impact! Once read, they're in one's brain FOREVER.

Gave it a two-star rating only because the book does not suit my personality, I found it too depressing and troubling despite the technical brilliance. I much prefer her historical novels, thank you very much (which are also rather depressing and troubling, haha, but since they're so long, the emotions are drawn out and don't hit you with as much concentrated force).

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Book Review: BEWILDERMENT by Richard Powers

Bewilderment by Richard Powers
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

(Mild spoilers below: be warned!)
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"Everyone alive on this fluke little planet was on the spectrum. That's what a spectrum is. Each of us vibrated at some unique frequency in the continuous rainbow. Nobody's perfect, but, man, we all fall short so beautifully."

If ever a book made be bewildered about my reaction (HAHA), it's this unforgettably heart-breaking book!! I can't decide whether I love it or hate it!! Had an inner debate on whether I would give it 5 stars or 1 (because of the last chapter DARN YOU TO HIGH HEAVENS RICHARD POWERS HUHU), but finally settled on a 4 because MY GOLLY THE MAN CAN WRITE. (And apparently the Pulitzer and Booker shortlisters agree!)

***Pardon all the exclamation points but THE BOOK LEFT ME AN EMOTIONAL WRECK!***

Prospective readers be warned: you will want to highlight/transcribe/put sticky tabs on nearly 3/4 of the book! Powers is able to say so much with very short sentences ("She felt like a prediction, a thing on its way here" and "What's grief? The world stripped of something you admire").

The author's background in physics before turning to literature is evident in his unique manner of rhapsodizing over things others might consider too mundane to write about: birdsong, insects, and flowers and plants. There's a great deal of pontificating as well, as this is a contemporary novel written by one who has a LOT on his mind. Powers managed to fit in Trump, TED talks, Greta Thunberg, Marie Kondo, Big Pharma and the political and environmental lunacy of 2021 under the guise of literary fiction, all while telling the story of a father and a nine-year-old son doing their best to cope after the death of the wife/mother.

This book will make you want to do the following (in no particular order):

1) Turn vegan
2) Throw it angrily after finishing the last chapter, lock yourself in a room and weep for a week
3) Research terms like Hadean Eon and the Fermi Paradox, and basically "obsess over the stars instead of Star Wars" and abiogenesis (the origin of life)
4) Call out all the institutions who are so quick to label (and prescribe medication for!) very young children as ADHD or OCD or "on the spectrum" instead of realizing that each and every child is a unique universe unto himself
5) Go camping under the night sky
6) Worry about the ethics of new research

Much of the book was about the father's agonizing choice of a new therapy for his child: a unique kind of behavioral modification from the Decoded Neurofeedback (DecNef) machine. It would involve having the son try to fit the template of his late mother's brain.

This paragraph on reading was lovely!

"I bought it in a used bookstore. Paying for it with my own money felt like cracking the code of adulthood. Holding it open in my hands, I wormholed into a different Earth. Small, light, portable parallel universes..."

The book defies categorization. Part sci-fi, part horror, part therapy for dealing with grief... All I know is... it isn't a romance because there is no HEA. But the longer I think about it, THAT's the message of the book. Seen through the eyes of a child more empathetic than most (and thus labelled as "special"), recent events on earth are too worrisome to ignore.

This book is a warning: act now, before we doom our children. But also... despite the world's madness, there is so much beauty in it to marvel at!

This latest Powers novel was my first, and half-way in the book I ordered his previous novel. It's like being immersed in the brain of a philosophy/science professor, and I just can't get enough!!

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Book Review: MATRIX by Lauren Groff

Matrix by Lauren Groff
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

"The religion she was raised in had always seemed vaguely foolish to her, if rich with mystery and ceremony, for why should babies be born into sin... why should she, who felt her greatness hot in her blood, be considered lesser?"

This sentence should prepare any prospective reader for what lies ahead. Lauren Groff's book is sheer literary magic: a feminist re-telling of Marie de France's incredible life as an abbess in Medieval Angleterre (England) so well-told, I prophesy its inclusion in Literature curricula in the future!!

It must be said... this book is NOT for the close-minded! It ends with the heart-breaking burning of a book of visions, when described, might be considered "heretical."

(But then, so was the idea that the earth was round, at one time.)

It is the incredibly inspiring story of what educated women can do, when working for the good of their neighbors, despite the political maneuverings of power-mad male clerics who considered nuns inferior to priests in the flawed hierarchy of medieval organized religion.

"Of her own mind and hands she has shifted the world. She has made something new. This feeling is the thrill of creation."

Such a treasure of a book! More than a meditation on the blessings of celibacy ("She could give up the burn of singular love inside her and turn to a larger love.") and the religious life ("It is good, so very good, this quiet life of women and work."), it is for everyone who has ever felt discontent with the responsibilities they are born into... basically the human condition.

The protagonist, Marie, is unforgettable because she, too, starts out so unhappy. Thought ugly and unmarriageable, she rebels in her youth against the royal decree that binds her to the abbey. But through sheer force of will, she is able to remake her very soul, and creates a better world in her tiny patch of land, through a life-long struggle against "a new darkness" that "touches the island, led by incompetence and madness and greed."

This is my first Lauren Groff and it won't be my last! Look at the beauty of this paragraph:

"For when it comes to strength and goodness and brilliance and gentleness and grandeur of spirit so vast it takes one's breath away, beauty is nothing, beauty is a mote to a mountain, beauty is a mere straw alight beside a barn on fire."

There are books that are dangerous because of the ideas inside. This book is one of them. But I consider my being enriched for having read it.

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Book Review: THE WORD FOR WORLD IS FOREST by Ursula K. Le Guin (Hainish Cycle)

The Word for World Is Forest by Ursula K. Le Guin
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

"Murder has no reason."

For a very short novel (a little over 120 pages), this book packs quite a punch!

It is the too-familiar tale of colonialism writ anew, in a universe where there are multiple "humans" apart from Terran ones from Earth. These humanoid beings vary in terms of physical appearance but possess the same human soul and intellect.

It starts with one Terran captain who is sent to chop wood in the planet Athshe, to send back to a future Earth where wood is more precious than gold. The Athshean word for "world" is "forest," and it breaks the reader's heart to see what could have been a mutually beneficial relationship laid to waste, simply because of the Terran "man's man" who refuses to recognize the humanity of a species shorter and furrier than him.

Reading this book in light of recent events with the International Criminal Court just emphasizes the need to have a governing body that provides a check and balance over those lording it cruelly over their tiny part of the universe.

The most interesting scene in the book was the visit of two out-worlder delegates from other humanoid planets, representatives of the League of Worlds, and how differently the anthropologist and the military man treated them. One "had been trained to keep his mind open whether he wanted to or not." The other one's mind was purely set on getting his way, darn the torpedoes.

This is my second book from Le Guin's Hainish Cycle, the first one being "The Left Hand of Darkness." They can be read in any order. I had no trouble reading this 2nd of 9 independent works in the series. If LHOD was commentary on gender's impact on society, TWFWIF is Le Guin's anti-colonial, anti-racist treatise. While shorter than LHOD, this book is equally memorable. I hope to be able to track the other 7 books down. Le Guin is a delight both for the heart and the intellect!



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Book Review: THE BOOK OF DISQUIET by Fernando Pessoa (Trans. Margaret Jull Costa)

The Book of Disquiet by Fernando Pessoa
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

Beautifully written drivel.

* groan *

To think I was soooo looking forward to reading this book, after seeing it praised to high heavens! Am very grateful to the book friend who helped source this rare find, but I'm simply not its target audience.

There's a Filipino word that encapsulates what I feel about this book, which I disliked but finished out of a sense of integrity: "Sayang." The closest equivalent in English is the phrase: "What a waste."

And it IS a waste in more than one sense: the reader's finite time and resources, as well as the author's considerable writing prowess. Critics describe Pessoa as a genius because he managed to write in different personalities (called "heteronyms"). If so, this is a genius who wrote a book spreading the disquiet in his own soul to others, infecting other minds with his overblown sense of superiority at his aesthetic aptitude and moaning about how destiny doesn't reward him with the fame that he deserves.

What is the book about? It's about "the inert soul of a born abdicator," a clerk in Lisbon who has "conversations with myself" about Tedium, the people he observes in the cafe, at the office; the alienation he feels from others, and random things like the rain and evening.

"He symbolized those who have never been anybody; that was at the root of his suffering."

I suspect Pessoa wrote this out of envy of people he considered less intelligent than himself, but happier than he could ever be.

I've met people who would like Pessoa. People who consider themselves superior to their fellow man would like him.

Give me a Matthew Arnold over a Pessoa any day, or a Louisa May Alcott. They believed, as I do, that we were meant to do our part in making this world better, not increase the despair of others over imagined attacks by Fate.

Reading is spending time with the minds of other souls. There are cleaner, purer, more beneficial souls to spend time with than Pessoa's.

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Book Review: THE GOBLIN EMPEROR by Katherine Addison (The Goblin Emperor # 1)

The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

"It is the nature of all persons to hold on to power when they have it. Thus it stagnates and becomes clouded, poisonous... You do not hold on to power as your father and grandfather did. You are not afraid to let it go. And you have new ideas, ideas that no emperor before you has ever had."

This was a beautifully written fantasy novel that is rather unlike the grand epics that populate the genre. But in a good way. This is an intimate book in scale, about the trials of a lonely boy forgotten by the world, untrained for his royal destiny. Will he rise to the occasion, or will he be done away with by those mad for power? The author focuses the lens of her pen on one person, on one location. But if it is the royal palace full of noblemen who bristle at an outsider's rule, then of course there is no shortage of intrigue and murderous violence that truly surprised this reader (I yelped quite a few times because of the KABLAM-ASSASSINATION-ATTEMPT-THAT-I-NEVER-SAW-COMING moments)!

One thing that sets the novel apart: its protagonist is downright ugly (He's half goblin). The racism in the book comes from the more beautiful elves who look down on the "uglier" goblin race.

But then one terrible murderous assassination kills the reigning emperor and his three heirs simultaneously. And thus the fourth son -- whom the father addressed as "that damned whelp who looks just like his mother" and banished for 18 years -- is suddenly next in line for the Untheileneise throne.

Addison's world building is immense. Hers is a world with hundreds of characters, all of them with specifically chosen names that bear no resemblance to names in real life. And so many traditions and proper nouns are also named, helpfully listed in the 14 page appendix at the back. The sheer force of imagination that went into this book is remarkable, as the details are dense and shimmer and breathe with a life of their own. However, as a reader unfamiliar with these elvish and goblin names, I would recommend setting it aside for focused, straight reading on a weekend. Don't make the mistake I did: finishing 5 chapters, putting it down and picking it up again after 22 months. I had to start again from the very first page, hehe.

The theme of reluctant-yet-virtuous-ruler seems particularly timely in a weekend that will go down in Philippine history as one of the most dizzying in politics.

I knew this book was special because, when I put it down, I found myself truly caring for the innocent king. True, he knew nothing of politics, but that made him purer and with a heart bent towards serving instead of being served. Cynics around him scoffed and said he wasn't fit to rule, but those in his innermost circle saw that this innocence was worth protecting, that he hadn't been corrupted by all the power-grabbing in court.

Instead of focusing on vengeance and chess moves, he spent his time learning about what his people needed. He sought to bring elf and goblin closer together. He hadn't wanted this power, but now that he had it, he tried to use it to bring order to a fantasy world that so closely resembled our real one.

And all I could think of during this political circus of weekend was: perhaps this is the kind of leader that we need.

"He knew that if the rest of his life was spent in building bridges, it would be no bad thing."

Looking forward to reading Book 2 (The Speaker for the Dead), which came out this year!!

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Book Review: SHELF LIFE - CHRONICLES OF A CAIRO BOOKSELLER by Nadia Wassef

Shelf Life: Chronicles of a Cairo Bookseller by Nadia Wassef
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

"In an effort to suppress dissent, each political regime had taken control of cultural output... Starting a bookstore at this moment of cultural atrophy seemed impossible - and utterly necessary... Diwan was conceived as a reaction to a world that had stopped caring about the written word... She has nobler ideas than her surroundings permit... She brings people and ideas together."

Thus began the true story of a woman and her two female friends, and how they put up an ideal bookstore in a male-dominated Cairo. It is about to turn 20 years old in a few months, and can be found online here: https://diwanegypt.com/

Enjoyed this book (an early Christmas gift from Le Twinnie) so much! The four-star rating is because I think this has a target audience: a female book lover who holds administrative duties professionally. Am unsure if men would appreciate the writer's voice: colorfully cursing in every other page, declaring her opinions so decidedly while mercilessly painting an unflattering picture of a few vile people she encountered. Who knew that a bookstore could be so exciting?!

Part of what made this book so enjoyable was the author's sense of time and place. I streamed Umm Kulthum on Spotify because Wassef said she alternated her music with George Gershwin's in her bookstore.

It was inevitable, I suppose, for a bookseller to recommend her favorite reads, and thus I emerge at the end of the book having added more than a dozen "must-save-up-for" titles in my ever growing Wish list. It's good to have book dreams. Haha.

I could relate to so much in the book: a very frank description of the divide between the two Egypts (separated by educational background and socioeconomic class) seemed almost the same as the situation in Manila, as well as the unique approach to combat inefficient government bureaucracy (appreciation boxes of candy, anyone?).

It's the story of idealists living in a non-ideal environment, and I suppose every reader can relate to this. Readers know that the status quo shouldn't be this way, that there were better times, that we can forge better days ahead. That we are capable of much more than the mediocrity that surrounds us.

I read this book at a time when book selections in Philippine libraries are under siege, and freedom of thought is threatened. I take comfort in the fact that for as long as there are readers in any society, this attack on Civilization will not succeed.

"Mediocrity is our enemy... We wanted to remodel our country... we kept the faith, despite the odds. We refused to be bitter. Reading itself is an expression of faith."

It's a must-read for any book lover! And it made me miss physical bookstores so much, huhu.


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Book Review: "NINE LIVES - IN SEARCH OF THE SACRED IN MODERN INDIA" by William Dalrymple

Nine Lives: In Search Of The Sacred In Modern India by William Dalrymple
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

"All religions were one, maintained the Sufi saints, merely different manifestations of the same divine reality. What was important was not the empty ritual of the mosque or temple, but to understand that divinity can best be reached through the gateway of the human heart -- that we all have Paradise within us, if we know where to look."

This is my second Dalrymple, and once again I am struck by his beautifully illustrative and compassionate way of writing about geography, culture, and faith, for these three shape - and are shaped by - each other.

In this book, Dalrymple shares the nonfiction accounts of nine people he met in his travels: Jains, Sufis, Wahhabi, Buddhist, and followers of Tantra alike receive the blessing of respectful attention, without judgment, as the author asked them to share their lives spent in pursuing God in their chosen manner.

The differences are there, yes, but so too are the similarities, and it is a testament to Dalrymple's skill that this Catholic reader found much that resonated in the excerpts from the various religious texts included.

"What difference does it make if you call Allah by his Hindu names - Bhagwan or Ishwar? These are just words from different languages."

I was moved almost to tears in some chapters like "The Daughters of Yellamma" where women described the pains and humiliations of being a devadasi, and "The Singer of Epics" where I marvelled at the skill of bhopas, bards and shamans who keep a 600 year old epic alive.

In a time when a lot of secular and religious groups incite their members towards hate, this wonderful book was a healing balm to read, inspiring reflection on our universal common humanity.

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