The Sense of an Ending

The Sense of an Ending is a little book that won a big prize.  Depending on whether you count “blanks” as “pages,” the book comes in somewhere between 155 and 175 pages in length.  Julian Barnes packed so much into these few pages, however, that he won the 2011 Man Booker for his efforts.  But it is only when this character-driven novella finally shifts its emphasis to a dramatic plot development that the author’s aims become clear.

Tony Webster, now in his early sixties, has retired and is content with his rather solitary lifestyle.  However, when he learns that he is to receive a bequest from a woman he barely knew, Tony is forced to reminisce about his past and some of the key players from his schooldays, particularly Adrian Finn and Veronica Ford.  Adrian, a late-comer to Tony’s central London school, was almost immediately accepted into their circle by Tony and his other two friends.  Adrian’s obvious intelligence soon made him a favorite of his teachers, and the way he handled himself in and outside of class made each of the other three boys want to claim him as “best friend.”  Veronica Ford, whom Adrian later met at university, was his first serious girlfriend.  That she would be stolen from him by a young man like Adrian comes as no surprise.

Julian Barnes

But life goes on, as it always will.  Tony and his friends, Veronica included, manage to drift apart over the years despite their avowed intention to remain friends forever.  Even their proposed reunions come to little or nothing.  Time passes – and Tony believes that he understands his past as well as he ever will.  Decades later, he will be astounded to learn how little he was right about.

The Sense of an Ending is deceptively simple at times, and frustratingly opaque at others, but it is a memorable piece of fiction.  Whether or not the most deserving book has been chosen for each of the major literary prizes awarded each year is always arguable – and is always argued by book lovers.  That will certainly be the case with the 2011 winner of the Man Booker.  Whichever side of the question one comes down on, however, it is difficult to argue this is not a beautifully crafted piece of fiction that will have readers discussing it for years to come.

Rated at: 4.5

Short Story of the Week: "Probate" by Joyce Carol Oates

Although I have written quite a few posts about short stories for Book Chase, most of those posts have pertained to collections rather than to individual short stories.  I find it easier to write about collections than about single stories because, with single stories, I have to fight my tendency to give away too much.  I hate reading spoilers and I try not to write any.  That's easier said than done when it comes to short stories.  I do hope to write about individual stories more during 2012, maybe twice a month, beginning with today's entry.

Perhaps I can begin safely with a "longish" short story from Joyce Carol Oates's 2010 collection entitled Sourland.  I've chosen the 37-page story called "Probate" because of how it so completely encompasses the general theme of the collection.  Keep in mind that these stories were largely written around the time that Ms. Oates unexpectedly lost her husband of many years, a tragic experience that greatly influenced the stories in Sourland.

"Probate" tells one widow's story - and a sad and scary tale it is.

The story opens "on the third day of her new life" as an older woman tries to find her way inside the Trenton, New Jersey, courthouse so that she can probate her husband's will.  Adrienne, the widow of three-days experience, is virtually helpless.  She knows very little about the legalities of probate and is somewhat disoriented to find that hers is one of the few white faces in the entire building.

Things go wrong for Adrienne almost immediately, beginning with her strange encounter outside the courthouse with a young woman who barely seems to be speaking the same language.  During the nervous conversation, Adrienne finally panics and runs for the building's back entrance when the young woman (jokingly?) offers to sell her her toddler daughter.  Inside the courthouse, Adrienne enters an alien world for which she is totally unprepared - and things keep going downhill.

"Probate" is a Oates's portrayal of the bleak and confusing life faced by so many older women who are unprepared for the sudden loss of a husband who has taken care of all of life's little details during their decades of marriage.  It is a powerful and unforgettable story told in the way only someone who has experienced similar moments could possibly tell it.  Joyce Carol Oates is a master at portraying the all too common violence and loss that can change a life instantly, and she tells Adrienne's story in the voice I have come to love so much over the past 25 years.  "Probate" is not pretty; it is haunting and real.  It is a Joyce Carol Oates novel in a nutshell.

The Angel Makers

Jessica Gregson’s debut novel, The Angel Makers, is one of those novels that will make a reader question his feelings about crimes committed by otherwise admirable people.  Is a murder committed with good intentions any less a crime than a murder committed in the midst of rage or lust?  Would a good person allow other innocent lives to be taken simply because she does not want to be exposed as an earlier murderess of bad people?  Jessica Gregson will have you trying to decide the answers.

The Angel Makers is based upon a series of murders that occurred in Nagyrev, Hungary, over a 15-year period that began during World War I.  It is believed that at least 45 people were poisoned in the village during those years; some say the real number is closer to 300.  What is not in dispute is that the ringleaders, and source of the arsenic used to kill all of the victims, were the village midwife and her young assistant.  These two women, under fictional names, are the central characters of The Angel Makers.

One’s initial reaction might be to wonder how a crime of this proportion, one involving so many people, could have remained undiscovered for more than a decade.  Gregson’s description of the utter remoteness of life in rural Hungary during this period, and of the type of self-contained, closed society that developed there, makes it seem very possible – if not probable – that such killers could get away with their crimes for a very long time.  Even a series of crimes like this one, crimes that claimed the lives of multiple husbands, elderly parents, lovers, and sons, could remain a dark, self-contained secret when so many women had so much to lose if their crimes were exposed.

Jessica Gregson

So, what triggered the murders?  Simply put, when Italian prisoners of war were housed near the village, the women caught a glimpse of a life much different from the one they had been living with their husbands prior to the beginning of World War I.  With their own husbands away fighting the war, and a war from which they might never return, at that, it was too easy for the women to form relationships with the Italians for whom they were paid to cook, clean, and wash.  Because security at the makeshift prison was almost nonexistent, soon enough most of the village women had taken Italian lovers whom they preferred over their husbands.  When those husbands began to return from the front, the women had a choice to make.  Many were quick to choose their Italian lovers and the new lifestyle they had come to enjoy.

Is the murder of a man justified if it saves his wife from years of physical abuse or saves the life of the unborn child carried by that woman?  You decide.  The bigger moral question faced by the book’s two main characters involves what they did to hide their secret. Fearing exposure if they refused, the pair chose to make murder possible for other women who wanted to rid themselves of elderly parents, siblings in line for a family inheritance, or crippled husbands and sons.  Was Sari (the fictional midwife assistant) a good woman or a bad woman?  Did she deserve to hang – or not?  Read The Angel Makers before you try to answer those questions.

Rated: 4.0

Where's Sam?

This is not exactly a "bookish" post, but it explains why a whole weekend has gone by without me posting on Book Chase.  Most of you know that the NFL playoffs are in full-swing as of this weekend - and I confess to watching too many hours of football, both live and on television.

Before a new work week begins, I just wanted to check in and post these two pictures of where I spent a large portion of Saturday afternoon and early evening: Reliant Stadium, home of the Houston Texans who defeated the Cincinnati Bengals 31-10 in the first round of playoff games.

Click on the photos for a larger image.  This is a screenshot taken off the Houston Texans website.  I'm standing to the left of the goal posts, some 25 minutes before kickoff.

This is a zoomed in version of the same screenshot.  I'm the guy fooling with his telephone (just above that number 13 jersey at the bottom of the picture).  There's a little Texan's logo on my image to mark the spot.  To my left are my daughter's father-in-law, my grandson, and my son-in-law.

Push Has Come to Shove

As the grandfather of three children who suffer learning disabilities, I take great interest in books, like Steve Perry’s Push Has Come to Shove, that offer new ideas about educating this country’s children.  I also share the sense of urgency implied by the title Perry chose for his book – including its subtitle: Getting Our Kids the Education They Deserve – Even if It Means Picking a Fight.  It is past time that this nation gets serious about making the changes required to turn our public educational system around and, if picking a fight is the only way to do it, let’s get started.

How bad is it?  As evidence that it is very bad, indeed, I offer this heart-stopping quote from the chapter that discusses international test scores of school-age children:

           

            “Finland’s bottom 10 percent is better than our top 10 percent.”

If this quote is factual, it is the most terrifying thing I have read outside a Stephen King novel in years.  Imagine, for just a minute, what that really means.  Let it sink in.

When one considers that a minimum of “43 percent of students at two-year colleges and almost 30 percent of students enrolled in four-year colleges” required at least one remedial course before they can begin their actual college-level work, it is impossible to argue that our public schools are doing right by the children we entrust to them.  Too many parents, especially those whose children attend schools in white suburban areas, have been conned into believing that their schools are excellent because of the high percentage of students in those schools who rate as “proficient” on the standardized tests used to quantify such things.  As Dr. Perry points out, students who earn a “proficient” rating on these tests are, in fact, performing below grade level and their parent’s are being treated like fools.

Perry places the blame for the failure of our school system most squarely on the shoulders of teachers and the unions that make it almost impossible to fire them for anything less than sexual misconduct (and even termination for that crime is not always a “gimme” when the unions get involved).  He even titles one of his chapters “Teachers’ Unions: The Worst Thing That Ever Happened to Education,” a chapter in which he exposes the absurdity of a system that unionizes to protect incompetent teachers at the expense of the students they are responsible for educating. 

Dr. Steve Perry

Push Has Come to Shove is not entirely negative, however, and it would be a failure if it were.  Perry offers solutions that include school vouchers to be used to place children in charter and magnet schools, as well as in the existing public schools that are actually educating children properly.  He argues that schools need an immediate redesign if we are ever to educate our children the way we need to get the job done.  This redesign includes: “great teachers and great lesson plans, committed principals, a lengthened school calendar, the use of technology, and an updated curriculum.”

I do not agree with everything in Push Has Come to Shove (especially with Perry’s recommendation to hire the most “attractive” competent teachers to be found because students tend to relate to them easier), but Dr. Steve Perry is definitely on the right track.  The alternative to trying some of the radical ideas espoused in the book is to accept the failed system that is already crippling this country.  The choice is a no-brainer.  It is time to “pick a fight.”

Rated at: 4.5

No Mark upon Her

I do not come to Deborah Crombie’s No Mark upon Her as an experienced reader of her Kincaid/James mystery series.  That lack of background allows me to point out that No Mark upon Her works very well as a standalone mystery – so well, in fact, that I am now thinking about starting the series from the beginning.  Crombie’s character development and side plots are that good.  Crombie fans, too, are  probably already fairly familiar with her background, but I was intrigued to learn that, like Elizabeth George, Crombie is an American (from the Dallas area) who sets her novels in and around London.  And, as with George, had I not been told that she is American, I would have assumed that she is British.

Superintendent Duncan Kincaid and Detective Inspector Gemma James have more in common than the paychecks they earn from Scotland Yard.  They are also a married couple trying to balance the Yard’s insatiable demand on their lives with the personal time they need to nurture their marriage and their two young children.  The family is, in fact, on holiday when Duncan is asked to help determine whether the death of Rebecca Meredith, another high-ranking Scotland Yard detective, is perhaps more than the accidental drowning it first appears to be.  That Meredith was an Olympic-caliber rower intimately familiar with the section of the Thames from which her body was pulled, makes it difficult to take her drowning at face value.

As his investigation progresses, Kincaid will discover that Rebecca Meredith probably had as many enemies as she had friends.  Unfortunately, some of those enemies work for Scotland Yard, and Kincaid begins to suspect that his superiors are more concerned about protecting each other and the image of the Yard than they are about tracking down the young woman’s killer.  Then, when his wife’s investigation into a separate series of crimes begins to overlap with his own, Kincaid is shocked by the number of suspects, some of them in position to end his career with Scotland Yard, he must work through.

Deborah Crombie

No Mark upon Her takes the reader deep into the world of competitive rowing, particularly as it involves those young men so completely invested in the annual race between Cambridge and Oxford.  Most American readers will, I think, be surprised at the lifetime’s worth of prestige accrued by the small group of men who earn the right to participate in that yearly event.  Win or lose, just having participated in the race can positively influence a man’s success for the rest of his life.  Few readers of No Mark upon Her will ever again see this competition as the college lark they may have previously perceived it to be.

Crombie’s in-depth exploration of the everyday demands on, and concerns of, her main characters makes them real.  These are not one-dimensional cops and robbers; they must deal with all of the complications of life that the rest of us face.  It is easy to see why this series has already extended to fourteen books and is still going strong. 

Rated at: 4.0