Review: Late for Tea at the Deer Palace by Tamara Chalabi

So often what we learn from the nightly news is generic or impersonal. Even the human interest stories they show only touch the surface of complex situations. So when a memoir comes along to expand on our knowledge of historic and recent events, it is invaluable. Of course, a memoir by definition takes only one perspective and so has an inherent bias in its recounting. In this case, Tamara Chalabi a Lebanese-Iraqi, daughter of Ahmad Chalabi, one of the sources of perhaps questionable intelligence that led to the the American invasion in Iraq, writes a heartfelt and moving history of her family, their life in Iraq, and their subsequent exile from the country they loved.

Starting back in the early nineteen-teens, Chalabi opens the multi-generational tale of her influential and politically important family by introducing her great-grandfather, grandfather Hadi, and soon-to-be grandmother Bibi. She weaves the external happenings in the area that is soon to become the country of Iraq with the major personal events occurring in her wealthy family. Using the memories of her elderly relatives and what she remembers from her formidable grandmother, she constructs a tale of an elite family, political insiders despite their Shi'a religious identification in a country ruled by the Sunni, a family whose personal history is inextricably intertwined with the complex history of this troubled Middle Eastern country from its time as a part of the Ottoman Empire to its birth as an independent country mentored by the British and on through to its recent turbulent and violent history under Saddam Hussein and beyond.

This is neither dry history nor completely undocumented family memoir. Chalabi's family held governmental positions in most incarnations of Iraq's government until the coup d'etat that resulted in the deaths of everyone in the royal family. The men in the family earned immense wealth and had the ears of those who held the reins of power. The women, whose lives were more proscribed due to their religious beliefs and cultural mores, ruled the domestic sphere and contributed to their husbands' successes, especially Chalabi's diminutive, whirlwind grandmother Bibi who is a major presence throughout the bulk of the story.

The bulk of the tale centers around the unrest and turmoil of the first half of the twentieth century around Bhagdad, laying the groundwork and explaining the reasons that the situation today exists. Chalabi tries to be evenhanded in her criticisms of the West's dealings in the area but there are times when her anger towards Britain and the US seeps through. The weaving of the personal, the political and their extreme interconnectedness is done quite well, keeping the reader's attention through each narrative shift. The end of the book and the current lives of the Chalabis, especially Tamara's father Ahmad, feels much more rushed than the rest of the story though. It is possible to feel the nostalgia and yearning for a vanished time and place when Chalabi writes of the older generations but the feelings of exile are less complete when she tackles her own and her cousins' similar but confused feelings. And perhaps this would always hold true of a generation not born in country but it is a marked contrast and a definite weakness compared to the strength of feeling of previous generations. A look into a misunderstood area of the world through the eyes of one of its own, although certainly not an unbiased telling, an insightful one indeed.

Follow the rest of the blog tour for Chalabi's Late for Tea at the Deer Palace or look at the amazon reviews for others' thoughts and opinions on the book.

Thanks to Trish from TLC Book Tours and the publisher for sending me a copy of the book for review.

It's Monday! What Are You Reading?

The Russian classic has been vanquished; hear me roar! Now back to my regularly scheduled reading. This meme is hosted by Sheila at Book Journey.

Books I completed this past week are:

Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak
Foreign Correspondence by Geraldine Brooks

Bookmarks are still living in the middle of:

Let the Great World Spin by Colm McCann
Tantra Goddess by Caroline Muir
Late for Tea at the Deer Palace by Tamara Chalabi

Reviews posted this week:

Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak
Tempted Again by Cathie Linz
Foreign Correspondence by Geraldine Brooks

Books still needing to have reviews written (as opposed to the ones that are simply awaiting posting):

None for this year. Look to the sidebar for previous years' books missing reviews if you must!

Monday Mailbox

A multiple book week. I think of these as the universe's way to reward me for sticking it out with Doctor Zhivago. This past week's mailbox arrival:

Other Waters by Eleni Gage came from St. Martin's Press.
Just the cover of this one makes me swoon. But the story, the story! Its premise grabs me too: an ancient curse sends Maya from her happy Manhattan life back to India.

The Pioneer Woman by Ree Drummond came from Willim Morrow for a book tour.
Ree Drummond sure can cook. I'm looking forward to reading about how she went from city girl to cow girl who cooks.

Walter's Muse by Jean Davies Okimoto came from Endicott and Hugh Books for a book tour.
Another cover that makes me swoon; be still my water-loving heart. And count me in for anything set on an island!

As always, if you'd like to see the marvelous goodies in other people's mailboxes, make sure to visit At Home With Books as she is hosting this month's Mailbox Monday and have fun seeing how we are all doing our part to keep the USPS and delivery services viable.

Review: Foreign Correspondence by Geraldine Brooks

The internet and e-mail have really taken a toll on letter writing. Now that we have instant gratification, we are losing out on the simple joy of opening the mailbox to find an unexpected or conversely eagerly awaited missive from a far away friend. Now we mostly find bills instead of handwritten personal thoughts. The closest we often get anymore is the fake "handwriting" font on some junk mail envelopes. This is such a shame. Letter writing is careful and slow and often brings great delight to the recipient. I know, because I still write letters (although not nearly as often as I used to) and I had many, many penpals from all over the world as I was growing up. I even still keep in touch with several of them, having been writing to them for almost 30 years now. Hearing from them way back when opened a new world to me, one that I didn't encounter in the many suburban neighborhoods we lived in throughout my childhood.

Australian Geraldine Brooks grew up in a Sydney that she feared was provincial. Her lower middle class neighborhood was mocked as a representation of all that was boring and backwards about Australia. In order to broaden her horizons, taking after the example of her father, she started to write letters. Her first penpal, Sonny, was only just across town but could have lived a world away. After Sonny, Brooks chose penpals in countries that interested her. She wrote Joannie in America, intrigued by the country of her father's birth. She wrote Mishal in Israel because she was fascinated by Judaism. When she found out that Mishal was an Israeli Arab, she found another Israeli, this time a Jewish Israeli, Cohen, to add to her collection of penpals. And finally, enamoured of the student upheavals in France, she also wrote to Janine. Through all of these penpals, she learned more of the world. Twenty years later, during her father's final illness, she discovers the letters of these penpals and wonders where life has taken them. Like the journalist she is, she determines to discover their stories.

Brooks has drawn the Australia of her childhood precisely and lovingly. She chronicles her own political awakening and leanings and their genesis very well. And she has created a full and extensive portrait of her correspondence with Joannie and with the social consciousness that both girls developed as they wrote back and forth. Her letters from the others are either less illuminating or she wasn't given permission to use as much from them since the sections about these penpals are not as full and lack the sprightly, in-depth personality that the portion about Joannie has. Once Brooks goes on her search for her lost penpals, she has an amazingly easy time of it finding them. The fact that all of them ultimately welcomed her in to see their lives now (well, ten years ago when the book was written anyway) is wonderful.

I thoroughly enjoyed this memoir both for its portrayal of the disappeared Australia of Brooks' childhood and adolescence and for the tale of tracking down her former penpals to see where their lives had taken them. I had an Australian penpal as a child and young adult, a couple of decades after Brooks, and I'd love the chance to do as Brooks did and find her. Michelle Ennor, are you out there somewhere? In any case, Brooks's memoir captures the innocence of a younger Australia, uncovers the seeds of her own life choices, and shows how our early life shapes us as well as the ways in which we find ourselves yearning for a different future than we had ever envisioned.

Review: Tempted Again by Cathie Linz

Marissa Bennett is going home. She's just been through an emotionally devastating divorce so she's headed to the small Ohio college town she once couldn't wait to leave and where she is the new YA librarian. She arrives home in the middle of one of the town's many parades, literally right in the middle. Having taken a wrong turn, she is now a part of the parade until the sheriff waves her off the route and chastizes her. Worse than the embarrassment, it turns out that the sheriff is Connor Doyle, the first boy she ever loved and to whom she gave her virginity when she was in high school and he was at the local college.

Much as Marissa would like to avoid Connor, there's no way that she can. She ends up getting an apartment next door to his and then her pet project to connect with youth at risk is combined with a similar outreach Connor has developed. The two of them fight their attraction to each other despite their enforced proximity. Connor is haunted by the demons that drove him from his law enforcement job in Chicago to this tiny bucolic Ohio town. He still has nightmares about having a child die in his arms after gang related violence in Chicago. Marissa, on the other hand, is still reeling from the death of her less than one year old marriage to a cheating husband. She signed the divorce papers on what should have been her first wedding anniversary. Neither of them feels safe committing to anything close to a relationship and yet as they work together with the kids in their program, they draw ever closer.

In addition to Marissa and Connor, there are quite a few minor characters, including Connor's loony mother and grandmother, determined to marry him off, Marissa's menopausal and emotional mother, Marissa's self-absorbed and oblivious father, her irritating sister, and assorted townsfolk. Some of the characters are colorful and add entertainment value to the book while others serve less purpose. Marissa as a character is a bit annoying. She's got the self-esteem of a field mouse. Her divorce, while the catalyst for her return home, seems to have affected her less than the family dynamics between her parents, her sister, and herself despite the fact that much of the chaos of this situation is chalked up to her mother's menopause and is supposed to be a recent development. As for Connor, he supposedly doesn't recognize Marissa when he first sees her despite noting the unusual color of her eyes. This is a woman with whom he carried on a secret relationship and with whom he worked at a pizza place for a year and he's back in her home town. Odd.

The chemistry between Marissa and Connor was a little on the light side but given how reluctant either of them are to be together, it works fine. Some of the plot threads are given very short shrift and either should have been developed more or not included even to the extent that they were. Marissa's antagonistic relationship with her sister was not well-examined (or really explained at all). And the interactions with the youth group on both Marissa and Connor's part were few and far between. Given that a situation with the kids is pivotal to the story, the kids themselves and their relationship with the adult authorities (Marissa and Connor) aren't all that well handled. The resolution to this situation is also summed up too quickly for satisfaction. Over all a light and decent modern romance, this one won't wow the socks off of you but it's not a bad effort.

Review: Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak

Last year my book club chose The Clan of the Cave Bear by Jean Auel as our classic pick. Obviously we have a rather broad and inclusive sense of classics. While I enjoyed that novel way back when, this year, I wanted to read something that had been on my list for a long time, had in fact stood the test of time, and was fairly universally recognized as a classic. So I lobbied hard for Doctor Zhivago. I pointed out the newly done translation. I highlighted the love story aspect. And pushy me, I won the day. So much the worse! Book club is tonight and I'm afraid they are going to lynch me for my choice. Frankly, if I was anyone else but me, I might lynch me too. I have read many other Russian and Societ writers and have never quite felt the dread about returning to their works after putting them down as I did with this one. It was truly a chore.

Ostensibly the story of Yuri Zhivago and Larissa (Lara) Antipova, this a sweeping tale of the early stages of the Russian Revolution and its aftermath shot through with a doomed love story. Zhivago is a physician and a poet (his poetry follows the text of the novel). He is of the priviledged class but initially feels great sympathy with the proletariot. He volunteers to serve in WWI and it is while working as a medic there that he first meets Lara although he had glimpsed her once before in Moscow. Lara, born to wealth, lived through financial struggles with her mother after her father's death and suffered a Lolita-like relationship with the older man who posed as her mother's benefactor. As these two, both already married to others, continue to find each other after the war, through the revolution and then during the hardships and paranoia afterwards, they grow ever closer and eventually unable to resist any longer, fall into an all-consuming affair. But Yuri and Lara's love story is only a minor thread when compared to the sweeping and all-encompassing story of Russia's changes of the time, politically and socially.

The tenor of the Revolution changes in the course of the novel, as do Yuri's feelings about it and its potential. There are long and complicated musings on the philosophical ideology underpinning the Communist Party as versus those underpinning the White Party. Detailed and extensive descriptions of the Russian-Soviet countryside abound as well, with the weather sweeping through it frequently reflecting the desperation and despair accompanying the new regime's policies. It is no surprise, given the criticisms and even just the ambivalences toward the Revolution spelled out in the character of Yuri Zhivago that this was not allowed to be published in Russia and that there was subsequently a "request" by the government that Pasternak not accept the Nobel Prize.

For many unfamiliar with (or not avidly interested in) the details of the Russian Revolution, the story of Yuri and Lara is not enough to counterbalance the heavy political commentary. Even though I do have a decent working knowledge of the time, I found it tedious. Yuri and Lara as characters were flat and uninspired. The number of secondary and incidental characters was enormous and there was far too much information about each of them, especially when their background or views were not necessary to the plot in any way shape or form and their appearance in the tale was as fleeting as possible. Excessive is the word that springs to mind when I think of the novel as a whole, followed closely by boring. As much as I wanted to thrill to it as I did to Tolstoy's works so many years ago, I just couldn't. It's hard for me to say whether the translation had anything to do with the dry, unappealing nature of the novel for me but I don't plan to pick up another version to find out. Quite a disappointment.

Waiting on Wednesday

This meme is hosted by Breaking the Spine and is meant to highlight some great pre-publication books we all can't wait to get our grubby little mitts on.

The Art of Hearing Heartbeats by Jan-Philipp Sendker. The book is being released by Other Press on January 31, 2012.

Amazon says this about the book: A poignant and inspirational love story set in Burma, The Art of Hearing Heartbeats spans the decades between the 1950s and the present. When a successful New York lawyer suddenly disappears without a trace, neither his wife nor his daughter Julia has any idea where he might be…until they find a love letter he wrote many years ago, to a Burmese woman they have never heard of. Intent on solving the mystery and coming to terms with her father’s past, Julia decides to travel to the village where the woman lived. There she uncovers a tale of unimaginable hardship, resilience, and passion that will reaffirm the reader’s belief in the power of love to move mountains.