Review: Breakfast With Buddha by Roland Merullo

One of my book clubs chooses the upcoming reads based on the recommendations of a varied collection of people (not all of whom are in the group). This being the case, someone either in the group or close to a group member obviously raved about this book to get it onto our schedule. I certainly wasn't fussed by the choice as the book has been resident on my to be read shelves for quite some time now. But over all, it was rather a disappointment, especially knowing it had the force of recommendation behind it and a delightfully different premise too. I was quite disappointed to miss the meeting where it was discussed if only to hear other perspectives on it.

Otto Ringling is a middle-aged, food-book editor, originally from North Dakota, who lives a happy and fairly fulfilled life with his long-time wife and their two cookie-cutter teenaged children. The book opens with Otto (aka Everyman) taking time off work to drive out to North Dakota with his sister Cecelia to make arrangements for the disposition of their parents' farm, said parents having died in a car accident some months previous. But when Otto gets to his eccentric and New Age-ish sister's home, she informs him that she is not going with him. Instead, she wants him to take her spiritual advisor, to whom she wants to give her portion of the farm, with him. Otto doesn't want to have this perfect stranger in maroon robes foisted on him and he certainly doesn't want to show this foreigner a piece of America, but with grave misgivings, he agrees. So starts not only Otto's road trip but also his spiritual awakening.

With thoughts of mortality and the meaning of life flitting into and out of his consciousness, Otto is, of course, ripe to open to Volya Rinpoche's teachings. Unfortunately, Rinpoche sounds like Robert Fulghum and all he learned in kindergarten, offering up easy platitudes about living life mindfully, in moderation, and without causing harm to others. Certainly there's nothing wrong with living life this way, and a lot to be said for following this path, but as a revelation designed to open Otto's formerly skeptical eyes, it just trickles and dribbles, a little trite and very self-evident.

While some of the scenes of the childlike Rinpoche delighting in the everyday are entertaining enough, I am still uncertain as to how Otto ended up agreeing to take the man with him. Not only that but I apparently missed the transition Otto made from wanting to get to North Dakota quickly in order to rejoin his own family after wrapping up his business to willingly extending the road trip and meandering through the midwest with a not Buddhist monk in tow (Rinpoche refutes Otto's charge of Buddhism, claiming that all religions are at root similar enough to be not worth differentiating). The character of Rinpoche was a bit annoying and the way that his ability to use English seemed to fade in and out was almost as if Merullo veered between not wanting his spoken language to be a caricature and forgetting that he had written a character who indeed spoke English as an inexact second (or eleventh) language.

The latter portion of this first person narrative (Otto narrates) is very much a spiritual awakening journey and less and less of the road trip journey, a fact that made me lose interest in the book almost entirely. The ending grabbed me back, though not in a good way. The ending to this book was one of the most dreadful I have read in a long time, an airy-fairy, feel-good ending that grated unbelievably. Perhaps I am not spiritually open enough, just plain unelightened, or languishing too far back on the path, but I didn't love this book despite having been so attracted initially to the quirky premise and having enjoyed Merullo's A Little Love Story previously. Others thoroughly enjoyed the philosophical nature of the book though so it could just be my own stubbornness that kept me from being receptive to this novel.

Review: Independent People by Haldor Laxness

If you were being quizzed, how many of you, even those of you who are well read, could come up with an Icelandic author off the top of your head? I know I certainly couldn't have before being introduced to not only an Icelandic author but to THE Icelandic author, 1955 Nobel Prize winning author Laxness. This bleak, desolate novel of a poor sheep farmer ekeing out an existence for himself and his unhappy family can be a tough read. After all, it doesn't sound terribly appealing, does it? But it is far more than the plotline would suggest.

Opening the story with the recounting of a old myth, the reader first Bjartur of Summerhouses hiking to his newly purchased croft, which is reputed to be haunted by the characters of the myth. We see the measure of the man when he refuses to toss a stone on the cairn built to appease the mythic figures he disdains. And we know his hard-headed determination will not yield to anything, not to softness, kindness, foolishness, or truth. He has worked for 18 years to be able to put down a downpayment on a poor farm with only a small sod home/barn on it and a few animals but he feels richer than the richest man around. To this remote holding he brings first a wife, who gives birth to another man's child alone during a blizzard, bleeding to death in the process. Surprisingly Bjartur opts to raise the baby as his own, finds another wife (one who seemingly had little to no choice but to marry him) and fathers more children, only two of whom live past infanthood.

This is really Bjartur's story as most of the other characters are one dimensional, with the exception of eldest daughter Asta Sollilja. Life is hard and nature cruel but Bjartur continues to eke out an existence. There are great descriptive swathes spent on worms killing sheep and butchering animals and the like but somehow, they only add to the narrative. Like a homegrown sort of Odyssey, all experienced within a day or two's walk, the experiences and adventures of the bombastic Bjartur are all oriented towards a striving for home (and in Bjartur's case, of independence). Almost all reviewers have called this an epic book, and it does indeed feel epic. Echoes of poor farming settlers everywhere abound but there also seems to be something indescribable that is purely Icelandic here as well. It feels as if this must have been written under the lowering sky of sunless winters. And yet, I think it brilliant in a depressing, downtrodden sort of way. Probably not for all readers, as there is little (no?) joy to be found in the characters here. But for those who want to persevere, they will be rewarded with nuggets of truth.