Purple Hibiscus

by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Thomas Allen & Son 2003

"That's a hibiscus, isn't it, Aunty?" Jaja asked, staring at a plant close to the barbed wire fencing. "I didn't know there were purple hibiscuses."

This is a harsh story, almost unbearable at first, but beautifully written.

Fifteen-year-old Kambili and her brother, Jaja, are brought up by an overly strict father in a wealthy Nigerian household. They and their mother are physically abused. Both children live in terror of not achieving the “best-in-class” on school exams because they know the beatings that will follow. There are other forms of torture and cruelty that I won’t describe here.

As things fell apart in the family, the children were allowed to go stay with their aunt in a nearby city. The Aunt and her family were a loving counterpoint to the father's repressive violence. While the children were with the aunt, Jaja was able to explore gardening. He was the one that planted the purple hibiscus in his family's yard when they returned home.

I can't explain why I kept reading this book … it was so unbearably cruel, but I kept coming back to it time and again. I didn't take it back to the library. It was in my book bag to be returned, but it kept calling to me. I'd pull it out and read some more. The purple hibiscus flowers kept turning up, rather like a beacon of hope.

Eventually, I was glad I finished the book because there are some more positive experiences with her Aunt and family and friends, and with her grandfather.

A Good Man is Hard to Find

Flannery O’Connor
Harvest Brace Jovanovich, Publishers
1976

I was first attracted to this book by the title and by the cover.

There are ten short stories here – twisted, sparse, dark, gloomy, funny, dramatic, Southern, angry, sexy, possibly racist, unforgiving, brooding and scary.

Flannery O'Connor was a devout Catholic, which made her a bit of an outsider in the Evangelical Protestant South. She believed in God, but not so much in people. She wrote about ugly, ugly things in such a way that they are completely beautiful. And usually heartbreaking. She painted her characters with exquisite detail,

Someone said she made the south seem even creepier than it already was

Before the Frost

Henning Mankell
translated from the Swedish by Ebba Segerberg
Vintage Canada 2002





Wallander’s daughter, Linda, has just graduated from the police academy and is awaiting her starting position on the local police force in Ystad. They find themselves forced to confront a group of extremists bent on punishing the world's sinners, a group of religious fanatics led by an ex-member of Jim Jones’ congregation in Guyana – one who escaped the mass murders and suicide. The intricate story is deftly told, and the pacing of the action is such that you hate to put the book down – even to go to sleep!

The father/daughter relationship here is quite fascinating, and we learn about Kurt’s moods and temper and weaknesses. She's always ragging him about his bad eating habits and his ever-increasing weight - about his sex life, or lack thereof. There's also a small glimpse into the life of Kurt's ex-wife, Mona. I enjoyed looking into the lives of many of the characters, their lives outside the job. Not just the regular mystery stories I’ve read, I’m looking now for more.

Now I want to visit Sweden. I know so little about that part of the world - I didn't even know there was a bridge between Denmark and Sweden - back to the atlas

Cold Comfort Farm

by Stella Gibbons
The Folio Society
London 1977


I've tried to read this book three or four times and always give up. It just doesn't appeal to me, and then I wonder what's wrong with me. So many of my bookish friends have high praise

I watched two of the movies or TV miniseries. The earlier one with Alistair Sim in 1971 with C, and we left in the middle of it. We giggled and laughed about it for years after, and called it the Pig Movie. She said she'd never let me choose another movie. Later I watched the 1996 version with Kate Beckinsale and Stephen Fry - same result, gave up part way through.

I borrowed the book from the library several times because this 1971 edition is so beautiful. The cover is dark green cloth with a design of vines and leaves. The water colour illustrations by Quentin Blake are quite gorgeous, fascinating and funny.

Here, Seth has been left to tend the breakfast meal.

In the large kitchen, which occupied most of the middle of the house, a sullen fire burned, the smoke of which wavered up the blackened walls and over the deal table, darkened by age and dirt, which was roughly set for a meal. A snood full of coars porridge hung over the fire, and standing with one arm resting upon the high mantel, looking moodily down into the heaving contents of the snood, was a tall young man whose riding-boots were splashed with mud to the thigh, and whose coarse linen shirt was open to his waist. The firelight lit up his diaphragm muscles as they heaved slowly in rough rhythm with the porridge.

What the heck is a snood?

Wallander's First Case

Wallander's First Case is the first of five short stories in Henning Mankell's The Pyramid. I came to read this book (my first by Mankell) after watching the PBS miniseries starring Kenneth Branagh that Nan at Hill Farm reviewed on her blog. You can listen to a fantastic interview with Henning Mankell in Toronto.

These five short mysteries take us back to the beginning and trace chronologically Wallander's growth from a rookie cop into a young father and then a middle-aged divorce.

In 1969, Kurt Wallander was twenty-one years of age, a young policeman, barely an adult, on his first homicide case. His next-door neighbor is dead, seemingly by his own hand. He is still a uniformed police officer in Malmo, tired of walking the streets. With a transfer to Criminal Investigation pending, his future boss encourages his involvement in the investigation. Once involved in a case, he can’t let go until he finds the answer. In this, his first case, he even calls in sick to do more investigating.

There are two problems in his personal life - one with Mona, his girlfriend who is impatient with the interference of his work. And he has issues with his father, an artist who painted the same landscape over and over. The elder Wallander strongly disapproves of his son's decision to join the police force, and frequently derides him for it.

His father has bought a house in Loderup and is moving after 19 years in this house where Wallander had grown up. Anxious that his childhood home was going to be torn down, he thought, "I am sentimental. Perhaps that's why I like opera. The questions is, can you be a good police officer if you have a tendency toward sentimentality?"

So now I've watched two episodes of the PBS series and look forward to the third next week. Apparently there is another series planned as well.

The Red Leather Diary Revisited

In the May 2009 issue of Shambhala Sun, Lily Koppel writes about her meetings with the author of the diary, Florence Wolfson Howitt. They first met at Florence's home in Connecticut and later in Florida.

Lily discovered the diary in a dumpster in Manhattan in 2003. The journal painted a picture of 1930's New York - horseback riding in Central Park, summer excursions to the Catskills, and an obsession with a famous avant-garde actress, Eva Le Gallienne. Florence began writing the day she received the diary on her fourteenth birthday in 1929. Its nearly 2,000 entries, written in ink that is now faded, captured the passions and ambitions of an intensely creative young woman.

I first wrote about this book on January 6, 2009. At that time I expressed my uncertainty as to the truth of the story. So here now is another look at Lily and Florence. There is a terrific audio interview with Lily and Rod Meade Sperry, one of the magazine's editors, here

I found the connection to Buddhism a bit labored, but interesting. Now I intend to go back and finish reading the diary. I gave up on it about two-thirds of the way through.

The House of Dolls

Barbara Comyns
Thorndike Press 1991

“Amy Doll, are you telling me that all those old girls upstairs are tarts?”

“Well, not exactly tarts, Doris, but they have gentlemen friends who pay them.”

Trouble is brewing at Amy Doll’s rooming house. Her four ‘golden girl’ boarders, near retirement, have embarked upon a new profession. Well, new to them anyway. In order to supplement their income, the four women traded in their girdles and afternoon tea for tight pants and drink, and began to dabble in the world’s oldest profession. Amy is timid and young and recently widowed, and now a reluctant ‘madam’.

Bertha Jago (she called herself Berti) is a woman of sixty-four, exceptionally tall and bamboo thin, appearing to have no hips, bottom or breasts

Ivy Rope is the youngest of Amy’s ladies – a widow who worked in a haberdashery and woolshop in the nearby Goucester Road

Evelyn Hunter-Smith is a country rector’s daughter (with blue-rinsed hair) and inclined to be a poor man’s edition of Berti. They had a similar build except that Evelyn was not quite as tall and she had a bust, which she considered her best feature. Both were addicted to tight trousers and drink and both had cropped heads

The Senora, as they called her, was in fact a senorita, in spite of her matronly figure. Augustina Puig had been living in the Dolls’ house for over eight years. Amy had never inquired what this magnificent Spanish woman was doing in a Walham Green horse meat shop or wondered who she came to leave her country. Her husband had brought her home one evening when he was engaged in decorating the horsemeat shop. “She’d fit nicely into the big room at the top,’ he said, ‘and the money she brings will pay for Hetty’s schooling.

This book is quite delightful – one long chuckle from beginning to end. Occasionally a great guffaw.

“Berti skimmed in, kissing the Greek on both cheeks, and spun round like a top in front of Ivy and Evelyn. She appeared to have a pair of dehydrated moths on her eyes. ‘Do you like them, dears? False eyelashes. I found them at the back of one of the drawers, must be at least ten years old, but very alluring.’ She fluttered the dehydrated moths over her almost-closed eyes.

“’ Can you see with them?’ Ivy asked bleakly. ‘Not very well, but as long as I can see my drink, that’s all that matters.’ Evelyn was still staring. ‘How have you fixed them?’ she enquired. ‘Actually with glue. There wasn’t anything else. It stings a bit. Do you think they look all right?’