Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe

I am going to lump two books that are far from one another in time but near one another in theme. No doubt, all of you read Uncle Tom’s Cabin when you were teenagers but perhaps did not sufficiently appreciate the courage and the talent of the author at that time in your lives. This book shows in ways never seen before, the meaning of human beings used as property. It portrays an economic system based on dreadful injustice and yet maintained and faithfully exercised by believing Christians who were sure that they performed God’s work and fulfilled his commands by exploiting the work of their fellow men in a grotesquely unjust manner. Southern plantations prospered by means of slaves as property until the horrors grew to be known and made poignant via the slaves who managed to escape to the north, in particular into Canada. As a side comment, be it known that I believe eight U.S. presidents were slave owners. No wonder we are not done with the consequences of this history.

Geraldine Brooks who writes today and who is or perhaps was, a journalist for the Wall Street Journal and received the Pulitzer Prize, has written several novels of which I will mention MARCH, the father of Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women, a radical clergyman based on Bronson Alcott, Louisa May’s father who goes off to war to fight the horrors of slavery from the perspective of a minister in New England at the time of which Mrs. Stowe tells her story from the point of view of a Southern woman in 1861.

Do not imagine that this is a simplistic right/wrong tale of good and evil.  Far from it.  Both books deal with the complexities of the disaster, of the misery of war and the tragedies of peace, but they can be and perhaps should be read one after another to get a full picture of a time which is, by all accounts concerning the last American election, not yet completely resolved. Color mattered.  Color matters still. 

While I am talking to you about Geraldine Brooks, I would like to draw your attention to two other books by the same author: Year of Wonders and People of the Book.  The former deals with the bubonic plague in a village in England in the seventeenth century and the latter is almost a detective story concerning the origins of an illuminated manuscript created by Spanish Jews around 1500 and mysteriously survived to be discovered in Sarajevo in the present time. I agree, this is not much of a review, but I was so thrilled and enthralled by all three of the Brooks books that I need at least to mention them to you while focusing on the Civil War and race aspect of the two first ones I mentioned and meant to write about.

The Winter Vault by Anne Michaels

Please note: forthcoming March 2009!

This novel, which I found fascinating and beautifully written, is a three pronged lament for the tragedy caused by human arrogance. The story has three principal actors, three major destructions are evoked in three different parts of the world, more or less playing at the same time in history.  It is a twentieth century tale. The sub context is about love and redemption.  It is also about the power of family and of memory.  Memory is evoked by conversation and intimacy.  

I was going to start by telling you about Avery, Jean and Lucjan, to tell you who they are and from where they came, but I think it is better to begin with the places of destruction and you will be able to use your imagination for the plot without having it all given away by me.  We begin in Egypt with the barrage that was put into action by Nasser’s giant Aswan High Dam built in the 1960’s. This enormous hydro-electric power plant made a gap so deep and long, the land would never recover. “Nubia in its entirety – one hundred and twenty thousand villagers, their homes, land, and meticulously tended ancient groves and many hundreds of archeological sites – vanished.”  Nasser built the monument to himself just as Ramses had his likeness sculpted at Abu Simbel to himself. “Lake Nasser would melt away this holy ground.”  (300 kilometers worth of lake).

Avery, an english engineer and his canadian wife Jean are sent to Egypt so that he can supervise the immense project to save Abu Simbel from the rising waters.

This is the central plot. The love of this couple for one another, their attempt to live a life under grim conditions whilst he is engaged with all his skills to organize the move by hundreds of workers and machines, of that monument, block by block to a higher land. Avery has doubts all along concerning the worth of what will be in fact a fake monument, a reconstituted monument, a false witness of time. Jean becomes pregnant and carries the future within her. “What was lost was more than what was gained, said Jean.”

There is another destruction recounted by the third person, Lucjan, a polish Jew who not only witnessed the destruction of Warsaw but also took part in rebuilding it afterwards.  A fake old town is brought to life. A cheat. Can one bring a city back to life? Does it bring atonement? How is this related to the salvaging of Abu Simbel?

I find it difficult to end my review.  I have not told the story.  I have given you a mise en scène, a theme.  I have not told you about the beautifully crafted and carefully stitched family quilt of the memories of two people who seem to fit together like two pieces of a wooden jig saw puzzle: every joint, every limb, a smooth fit. I have skipped over the Saint Lawrence hydro-electric power plant and the destruction wrought by that project.  I have left out a great deal but I hope this little bit that I have written down will induce you to read a, yes I dare write a perhaps over-used word, a heartbreaking story.

A Most Wanted Man by John Le Carré

This novel by an author I seem always to have enjoyed and found interesting is, I believe a most confusing story. Some of the reviews talk of moral complexity.  It seemed to me to be difficult to follow.  Already there is a muslim terrorist who is an anti hero without available language since he speaks only chechen or bad russian, uniquely dressed in a shabby long black garment  He needs a translator and she is german but speaks russian. There is a Brit who is vague but exceedingly wealthy owner of a private bank in Vienna, there are the spy networks of the americans, the germans, the russians, oh dear, hard to keep track more so since they appear under various names at various times.  Some themes are familiar and you begin to feel at home in Le Carré territory: corporate greed, government excesses, a half starved young man is smuggled across the border, the german civil rights lawyer determined to save the world against the excesses of capitalism, the british banker who is attracted to her and who also is lost in the spy networks of international competition and confusion.

I haven’t given you the plot, I have not even been very enthusiastic about this latest Le Carré, but it is a handsome Christmas present for the fans of either the author or the eternal subject of international crime with mysterious good guys and bad guys who do not let you into their secret until the very end.  The hard cover edition is beautiful and comes with a green silk page marker to match the green author’s name on the cover.