Out of Africa

Out of Africa (#847) by Isak Dinesen is considered a classic memoir.  It was made into a movie starring Meryl Streep as Baroness Karen Blixen, the author's real name, and Robert Redford as her love interest Denys Finch Hatton.  I have vague recollections of seeing it when it came out, but we were unable to find a copy of the movie to see, so I got the book instead.  (They always tend to be better than any cinema version, anyway!)  It was recommended reading before our upcoming trip to Copenhagen, as we will be visiting her home.

It was interesting reading on many different levels.  For the time period, think Katherine Hepburn and Humphrey Bogart in The African Queen.  Isak Dinesen went out to Africa to get married prior to World War I.  Curiously, she only uses the word "husband" twice in her memoir, more than halfway through, once to note that he had volunteered to serve with the British forces in Africa, and once that he had sent back to the farm for supplies during the war.  Otherwise, the reader would assume that the Baroness ran the coffee farm completely on her own, managing with a staff of Natives, and enjoying  an active social life in and around Nairobi.

Of course, her many anecdotes of her interactions with those Natives read oddly to the modern mind.  It was still the age of Colonialism when her memoirs came out in the 30s.  In her era, I imagine Karen Blixen was regarded as rather progressive in her attitudes.

That also seems to be the case in her relationship with Denys Finch Hatton.  He was away leading Safaris most of the time, so he had no set home except with Karen Blixen on her farm, where he kept his books and mementos.  Together, they would fly over the hills and plains of the vast country in his small airplane.  He only refused to take her up with him once; as it turned out, it was prescient.  He was killed in a crash on that flight.  When Karen went into Nairobi for a lunch date just after it happened, no one would talk to her; no one had the courage to tell her that Finch Hatton had been killed.  She spends much time in her memoir on her mourning of this man, yet not a single word about her husband; not even his name or what happened to him!

She was eventually forced to leave Africa when her coffee farm failed and the debts mounted to such an extent her farm and belongings were sold out from beneath her.  She might have left Africa physically, but Africa never left her.

This memoir relies on its readers having a broad classics background, and a good knowledge of Scripture to keep up with her many metaphors and allusions, something not as common in today's world as it would have been when first published.  It is a unique glimpse into a world long gone.

Beneath a Scarlet Sky

It's no wonder Mark Sullivan's novel Beneath a Scarlet Sky (#846) spent so much time on the New York Times Best Sellers List.  Based on Italian teenager Pino Lella's actual World War II experiences, the narrative is both intense and brutal, recounting Pino's unsung heroics.

Milan had been largely untouched until the war drew on towards its final dreadful struggles under Mussolini and his Fascists.  As the Nazi presence grew larger in response to loosing ground to the Allies in Italy and elsewhere, it finally became a target for bombing.  Pino had just met the girl of his dreams, Anna.  That was the most important thing on his mind the night of the first bombardment.  In order to protect him and his younger brother, his well-to-do parents sent the boys to Casa Alpina high in the mountains.  There he became involved with Father Re's efforts to smuggle Jews out of Italy and over the border to nearby Switzerland.  Not exactly the isolated study center Pino's parents had had in mind.  When he neared his eighteenth birthday, Pino was abruptly summoned home and forced by his parents to enlist in the German army to save him from the draft that would have sent him to the front immediately as cannon fodder.  As luck would have it, recovering from a minor wound, Pino suddenly finds himself personal driver to the mysterious Brigadier General Leyers, high up in the Nazi command structure.  He is also perfectly positioned to spy for the Italian partisans, his role known only to his uncle Albert who recruited him.  Pino's life over the next several years is harrowing, to say the least.  He finds Anna again, only to lose her in a most terrible way, leaving him to doubt himself and his God.

I know very little about WWII and how it affected Italy, so this book was interesting on that level alone.  Pino's story and how it came to be written many years after the fact is astonishing.  How Pino survived the war is a miracle all by itself.  How many others he may have saved through his courageous actions is not known.  Their stories told here are worth reading.

The Starless Sea

It didn't take me more than a few pages of reading The Starless Sea (#845) by Erin Morgenstern to remind me why I loved The Night Circus (See my post of 5/7/12.) so much.  It's been a long wait between books.

This novel revolves around a vast underground world filled with books and stories.  It's dying, but there are those on the surface who are eager to hurry its demise along.  Zachary Ezra Rawlins, a New England graduate student, is unwittingly pulled into the arcane politics at play here when he finds an uncatalogued book in the college library stacks.  As he begins to read the battered old volume, he realizes that that some of the stories in the book are about him.  Who wrote it, and how did they know what he did when he was younger so precisely?

If you are looking for an ordinary book with a chronological narrative, The Starless Sea is not for you.  Erin Morgenstern uses many short stories and anecdotes to weave her tale.  At first, the connections between these fairy tales and hero legends are not apparent, but gradually the threads tying the narratives together become apparent through symbols and metaphors.  The stories themselves are enchanting.  Who can resist a place piled with stacks and stacks of books everywhere, beeswax candles, and a Kitchen which can instantly produce the most delicious snacks and beverages?  Add in a mysterious young women with pink hair, a Keeper whose job it is to look after things, a man lost in time, the Owl King and cats, lots of cats, and you have a small idea of some of the pleasures that await between the pages of The Starless Sea.

It's been a long time coming, but The Starless Sea was well worth the wait.

Time After Time

Lisa Grunwald's latest novel, Time After Time (#844) is both a ghost story and a tribute to Grand Central Terminal in New York City.  She says she found the idea for this story when browsing in the Columbia University stacks and came upon a non-fiction volume about Grand Central Station while researching a different book.   There she found an anecdote about a distraught young women who showed up at 4:00 a.m..  A kind terminal employee escorted her home to her aunt's place just a few blocks away, but she vanished on the way there.  After searching fruitlessly for her, he knocked on the aunt's door, only to be told that this had happened for thirty-eight years on that date, the day her niece was killed in a gas explosion while Grand Central was under construction.  Ms. Grunwald took this idea and ran with it.

Nora Lansing appears early one December morning in the middle of Grand Central's Main Concourse.  Joe Reynolds, hurrying on his way to a prayer meeting on Track 13 before he begins his shift as a leverman, thinks she is the most beautiful woman he has ever seen.  But there is something not quite right about her; her dress is old-fashioned, and on this cold morning, where are her coat and handbag?  He stops to see if he can help her.  She seems confused, but asks to be escorted home to Turtle Bay Gardens, a swanky area of New York City.  They don't get very far from the station when they are confronted by a mugger.  By the time Joe has dealt with him, Nora is gone, leaving only his coat behind on the sidewalk where he last saw her.  It would be several years before he sees her again...

Nora and Joe do find a way to be together within the confines of Grand Central Terminal as they gradually figure out the parameters of their relationship. Even the celestial phenomenon of Manhattanhenge plays a role in their story.  Love and sacrifice bind them together and tear them apart.  Time is the ultimate metaphor here.  It's an intriguing love story.