The Gift of Rain by Tan Twan Eng

A few months ago I read the most recent novel by Tan Twan Eng, The House of Doors, liked it enough that I decided it was time to read his earlier novels, beginning with The Gift of Rain. Published in 2008 it was nominated for the Man Booker Prize that year.

The story begins in 1939, in Penang, where we meet Philip Hutton. Philip is the 16-year-old son of Noel Hutton and his second wife, Khoo Yu Lian, a Chinese woman. Philip has two older brothers, and a sister from his father’s first marriage to a British woman. As a mixed-race child, Philip felt he was “a child born between two worlds, belonging to neither”.

We meet Philip when he is a much older man, when a Japanese woman, Michiko Murakami, arrives at his door. She was once a friend to Hayato Endo, as was Philip “before the war wrecked everything”. Philip still lives in the home where he was born, Istana, where on the day he “was born my father planted a casuarina tree”.

Visible from Istana is a small island. Early in 1939 Noel Hutton leased the island to Hayato Endo, who became teacher in aikijutsu, and mentor to Philip.

Michiko has come to Philip asking about the years Philip shared with a man she once loved. Reluctant, at first, to speak to her, Philip comes to trust her, and finds comfort in sharing his story. A story that takes us from the Japanese incursion into China, and into the Second World War. The British in Penang refused to believe that Japan would have any interest in their small island.

The Japanese landed on the Malayan Peninsula in early December, 1941, a day before the attack on Pearl Harbour. Many residents of Penang left for Singapore believing they would be safe there. Noel Hutton refused to leave Penang, and the business his great-grandfather founded.

Many readers will know about the history of this time, and the cruelty of the Japanese. What many will not know about is the culture of the Chinese and the Japanese, the way of life at this time in this place. The discipline of what is taught to Philip by Endo-san. A practice that influenced their actions during the war.

The story is told in the first person, almost all of it taking place in the past, with a few chapters returning to the present time as Philip and Michiko come closer to the end of their stories. I found this a novel to be of interesting history, of a time before, during and after the Second World War in Malaysia. It is beautifully written and composed. And, it is a book that will leave you thinking. How far would you go to protect your family, yourself and those you love?

Toward the end of the novel, we see two old people sitting on a bench. Two old people who hold memory. A time that will be gone when it is no longer held in living memory, when their lives come to an end.

Forever Home by Graham Norton

Forever Home by Graham Norton is a recently published novel that will give readers a complete escape from the troubles of our times, and transport you to the small town of Ballytoor in Ireland. There you will land right in the middle of the troubles of Carol Crottie and Declan Barry, of Number Seven, Stable Row.

Carol is divorced from her first husband, her son is grown and working away in London. Carol has been living with Declan Barry for a decade, his children Sally and Killen also now living away from home, but closer at hand. Declan’s wife left the family many years earlier – her whereabouts unknown.

The other major player in this modern day drama is Carol’s mother, Moira. A woman who lets nothing stand in her way. Especially when it comes to protecting her family.

Carol is happy with her life with Declan, living in the home Declan shared with his first wife and children. A home Declan has declared he will never leave and will never sell.

Well, as we all know there are sometimes things that happen in life. Things we cannot control.

Now I am struggling to tell you that this is a book you will enjoy reading, without giving away the plot.

Each of Carol and Declan’s children have their own concerns and struggles that come to the surface as the story progresses. Carol and her mother make a discovery that is both dreadful and absurd. I think this is considered black humour.

Graham Norton captures perfectly the way in which we behave when faced with life’s unexpected challenges. His characters will become real to you, reflecting aspects of people in our own lives.

I have never had occasion to watch Graham Norton in action as a British television celebrity, but I have read his earlier novels, Home Stretch among them. He has the ability to take a situation and people it with characters who behave as one might expect, flaws and all, and reveal people we can both relate to, and care for.

Everyone has a story. Graham Norton does an excellent job of telling it, and providing a time of respite from our own troubled times. Guaranteed!

Absolution by Alice McDermott

I have been reading novels by Alice McDermott all of my adult life, a new one every few years or more, with the most recent, Absolution, published this fall. Reading this novel, by a writer of my own age, who writes about a time I can remember, 1963. When most of this story takes place, I was much the same age of Rainey, daughter of Charlene. Charlene is the wife of Kent. They are members of the American ex-pat community in Saigon, businessmen who have an interest in Vietnam and governmental officials, including military intelligence officers. One of these officers is Peter Kelley, newly arrived, along with his young wife, Patricia.

There are the men, with their very serious jobs, and there are the wives. The wives are expected to support their husbands, and to be perfectly turned out at the obligatory and numerous cocktail parties and dinners that all attend. It is part of the job. Anne McDermott’s description of Patricia preparing for one of these evenings was my own mother’s life as a military wife in foreign lands, her dresses, stockings and gloves. Her Birks box full of “those fragile, pale blue airmail letters with their complex folds”.

Charlene is an experienced wife, and mother. She is a woman who knows what she wants to do, and does it. She befriends Patricia and involves her in schemes to raise money to help the poor of Saigon, children in hospital and others in need. You will be forgiven, when the Barbie doll project is launched, if you think this book is not for you. But, stay with it. There is much more to come that more than makes up for what seems facile, at best.

The story begins with Patricia, now a much older woman telling her story. We realize at some point that she is telling this to Charlene’s daughter, Rainey. Though Rainey remembers much of the life her family lived in Saigon, she was too young to understand so much of what her mother was doing at the time. Patricia can tell her now.

The second part of the novel is Rainey’s story, revealing what happened to her family, and to some of the others they all knew in Vietnam. And the third part, Patricia’s response. Nicely wrapping things up for the reader.

I think of the war in Vietnam from the perspective of my generation, of the young American men who lost their lives in jungle warfare, the body count on the television news. The draft dodgers, the protests. A war the Vietnamese call “the American War”. Absolution brings us a different story, that of the wives, women who witnessed.

I wondered at the title – as the biblical definition of absolution is “an ecclesiastical declaration of forgiveness of sins”. There is no doubt much to be forgiven – many sins – but I also felt compassion for these women, especially those who tried to do good. Alice McDermott, as always, perfectly captures a time and place and takes us there.

The Museum of Failures by Thrity Umrigar

Remy Wadia has lived in the United States for several years, coming for a graduate degree, meeting his American wife, Kathy, and making it home. Though home is also Bombay, where his widowed mother still lives and where Remy is now returning with plans to adopt a baby.

The Museum of Failures by Thrity Umrigar begins as Remy arrives in Bombay, meets with his friends who have arranged with their unmarried niece that Remy and Kathy will adopt the baby she is expecting. Remy has not been back to Bombay for several years, not since the death of his father, Cyrus.

Remy has always had a complicated relationship with his mother, Shirin, a woman quick to anger. Who spoke words in anger that he has never forgotten, while his father made it very clear that Remy was his most beloved. When Remy discovers, on his return, that his mother is in hospital and seriously ill, he has no choice but to take charge of her care.

Remy is a nice man, a kind man, sensible and self-aware. His marriage is strong, husband and wife supportive of each other, tolerant and kind, and honest. They will need each other during this time apart.

As Remy cares for his mother, now diminished in her illness, his feelings for her change, he sees her with compassion and love in her helplessness.

This is a novel about members of the close knit Parsi community living in modern day Bombay, renamed Mumbai in 1995. Remy is from an affluent family, his father a successful businessman, a donor to many causes, a generous man to all. Remy and his friends have the privilege of a good education and as they spend time together as adults, we see the younger people they once were.

We read about Remy’s early days in America and his relationship with the woman who will become his wife, and her family that also becomes his own.

The Museum of Failures is a novel about discovery, of the truth of the past. What was witnessed by a child, is now understood so differently as an adult. It is about love, and betrayal and grief. It is about the “stew” of marriage, and of the love Shirin feels for her husband after his death. That no one knows the inside of another’s marriage. And, that everyone does the best they can, and that we are all fallible.

His time in Bombay with his mother will profoundly change Remy. He will discover long held secrets and come to an understanding of his parents, and his own childhood, that will bring him peace and hope for the future. 

The Museum of Failures is a good read, a book you’ll not want to put down – and a book that will make you think about your own life and experience, your assumptions and prejudices, and that it can all change for the better is we are open to love.

Held by Anne Michaels

I was more than thrilled to see the announcement of a new book by Anne Michaels, published this week, Held.

Anne Michaels is well known as a poet, was Toronto’s Poet Laureate from 2015 to 2019. She has had several volumes of poetry published, the first in 1986 The Weight of Oranges. A decade later her first novel, Fugitive Pieces, was published and took the world by storm. The Winter Vault was published in 2009, and now Held.

Held is composed of twelve vignettes, taking place over more than a century. All are linked and all tell a story woven through time and place. We meet photographers, some who find fugitive images on glass plates, images that may or may not give comfort and solace to the recipient of the photograph. There are painters, suffragettes, women of science, widows.

Always, the dead are with us. The beloved, the cherished, those who are missing from our lives. Those who will never come home, no matter how long we wait, how much we wish for their return.

This is a novel written by a poet. Sometimes so few words say so much.  

I found myself, more than once, in tears. That words have this power to cut to our core. I also thought about this book, how important it is at this time. A time of war, of such hatred.

Held is a powerful novel, a reflection on love and grief and what it is to be human. 

I read Held late into the night, and immediately on finishing, found my copy of Fugitive Pieces to re-read. I was a completely different person in 1996 than I am now. We all are. I hate to admit I remembered little of the story Fugitive Pieces tells and found myself at once lost in the story of Jakob Beer, a young boy who emerges out of the mud in Europe, found by a Greek man, Athos, taken to Greece, and thereby rescued from the Holocaust.  Athos becomes parent, educator, and mentor to Jakob. We follow their story from Greece to Toronto. There is horror and there is joy. Always, there is exquisite writing.

While reading both Held and Fugitive Pieces I found myself lamenting the loss of what was once so plentiful – true literary novels of meaning and importance. There are now so few novels that challenge our intellects, that provide pleasure through the beauty of the writing as well as the story. Both of these novels are sometimes hard to read, but we must never forget the horror of the Holocaust – especially now. It must never happen again.