“The Invisible Bridge” by Julie Orringer FIC ORRI (also LARGE PRINT, ebook, downloadable audiobook)
This is a hefty (almost 600 pages) but beautifully written novel about Jewish Hungarians before and during World War II. I usually avoid reading such long books, but it was chosen by a book discussion group, so I dutifully plowed through all those luscious words. The thing I wondered about most was the title–there was nothing mentioned about an “invisible bridge” until page 331 and then it was just a mention, nothing more. So by the end I had to wonder about the various meanings of an invisible bridge as a metaphor which was one of the things that made this book good for discussion.
I didn’t know very much about the country of Hungary in general let alone about what things were like there just prior to and during WWII. Hungary had been on the losing side in WWI and lost some territory the politicians wanted back. Going with Hitler seemed like the only way they’d get it back, so they sided with him. Orringer wrote about the Arrow Cross, Hungary’s Fascist element, but also about Hungarians who weren’t antisemites. “The Invisible Bridge” is a family saga, a love story, a coming of age story, a war story, and historical fiction. The reader really gets of sense of post-WWI Hungary, what people wore, what they ate, what the culture was like. The reader also gets a similar sense of Paris where a sizable Hungarian community lived before the WWII.
The book ends with a wonderfully powerful poem called “Any Case” by the Polish Nobel Prize winner Wislawa Szymborska. It refers back to many of the occurrences in the book, how unlikely they were, and why they happened anyway. Orringer writes, “In the end, what astonished him most was not the vastness of it all–that was impossible to take in, the hundreds of thousands of dead from Hungary alone, and the millions from all over Europe–but the excruciating smallness, the pinpoint upon which every life was balanced. The scale might be tipped by the tiniest of things: the lice that carried typhus, the few thimblefuls of water that remained in a canteen, the dust of breadcrumbs in a pocket.”
Agatha Christie’s been around for a long, long time and some people avoid her because of that. They prefer something more cutting edge. I have heard that some people have avoided her because she’s recommended so often and these people are self-proclaimed contrarians. Both kinds of readers are in my mystery discussion group as well as those who have read all of Christie’s work more than once. We voted to read “Murder at the Vicarage” because it’s the first in Christie’s Miss Marple series. Our theme this year is “No Pants Detectives” and Miss Marple wouldn’t be caught dead wearing trousers. Everyone who had doubts was won over. Christie’s skill at dialogue is phenomenal and her books are definitely dialogue-driven. When the almost universally disliked Col. Protheroe is found dead from a single bullet wound, there are many suspects. The bucolic English village of St. Mary Mead is abuzz with the possibilities and probabilities. Christie kind of throws things off with her first person narrator (the vicar not Miss Marple). Miss Marple is the one who always keeps her eyes open as she gardens and birdwatches; she’s suspicious and intuitive. There’s a physician character who interested me with his theories about the physical/chemical origins of criminality and how the death penalty in the modern age is akin to witch burning in the middle ages. In other words, he’s not for it. There are plenty of red herrings for those who love puzzle mysteries and the complex solution is rather ingenious in its convolutions.
In between self-deprecating, humorous personal anecdotes Greenberg portrays a very serious depletion of four types of fish from all the oceans and seas. They have dominated our modern seafood market and are salmon, tuna, bass, and cod, all of which used to be quite numerous indeed. So the reader alternates between groans of concern and chuckles of rueful recognition.
A book that Greenberg referenced several times was “Cod” by Mark Kurlansky 333.95 KU.
Yes, Hedy’s on a reading binge–three reviews in just one week! The Gladwellian trilogy includes “The Tipping Point” and “Blink”. “The Outliers” main premise seems to be that there are many geniuses in the world and many people who work very hard, but even if you put both those things together, it takes more than that. We are born at different times, members of different families, living in different places, given different opportunities. The combinations are unquantifiable. Gladwell tells fascinating stories about the Beatles and Bill Gates and why he thinks they were successful, why Korean and Brazilian airlines have had such abysmal crash records, how rice paddies and language make the Chinese skilled at math, why the best hockey players are born in the first half of the year, etc. etc. I love how Gladwell thinks out of the box!
Spencer-Fleming’s debut mystery won an unprecedented number of awards: Anthony, Macavity, Barry, Dilys, Agatha, and Malice Domestic. It’s the first in the Clare Fergusson series which takes place in the small town of Miller’s Kill, upstate New York. Clare is a new Episcopal priest in a conservative parish. She herself is not so conservative, however. Before becoming a priest, she was an Army helicopter pilot in Desert Storm and her fondest dream now is to help unwed teenage mothers have a better life. When a newborn baby is abandoned on the church steps, she meets Russ Van Alstyne, the town’s police chief. He’s an agnostic when it comes to God and is cynical about social issues, but he’s also ex-Army having served during the Vietnam War. Their military experiences serve as a bond for them. Clare and Russ’s relationship and where it’s going to go is a bigger deal even than the mystery itself for many readers.
In this psychobiography of Henry James in the years 1895-1899 (with many flashbacks), the reader learns about what made a particular author tick. He had an unusual, richly intellectual, and often tragic family life. He had a lot of friends, some erstwhile, some longlived, all eccentric. He loved living all over Europe, especially Rye, England, but did not become an English citizen until the year before he died. His powers of observation allowed him to use actual people and real-life incidents in the creation of his fictional characters and plots in such books as “Daisy Miller”, “The Portrait of a Lady”, and “The Turn of the Screw”. He was an introvert who loved solitude, but at the same time experienced loneliness. And he was a genius of a writer.
The Contemporary Books Discussion Groups will be reading at least one book a year (till 2015) in commemoration of the sesquicentennial of the American Civil War. “The March” refers to what happened in 1864 when Union General William Tecumseh Sherman burned Atlanta and marched 60,000 troops east through Georgia to the sea and then north into the Carolinas.
This is the first in a series that was published in 1966 with many Cold War references. From the publisher: “Mrs. Virgil (Emily) Pollifax of New Brunswick, New Jersey, was a widow with grown, married children. She was tired of attending her Garden Club meetings. She wanted to do something good for her country. So, naturally, she became a CIA agent.” Yes, she just unexpectedly walked into the director’s office and said she’d always wanted to be a spy and was offering her services on the spot. Through a case of mistaken identity and an emergency need for a simple courier, Mrs. Pollifax was entrusted with the job of picking up an important item in Mexico City and bringing it back to CIA headquarters. The CIA’s communist opponents were underestimated, however, and Mrs. Pollifax gets into deep, deep trouble, ending up in a prison cell in Albania.
This was Augustana College’s “First Book” recently–the one all incoming freshmen are required to read. This year the River Action Environmental Book Group read and discussed it too. I’ve often read that water will be the 21st century oil–wars will be fought over it. Royte fills this book with all sorts of facts and anecdotes. She reminded me of National Public Radio reporting in that she states a solution that sounds feasible and then in the next paragraph handily refutes it. She does this with fluoride, ethanol, filtered water, plastic made out of corn, container deposit laws, recycling….etc. At least she does eventually reveal what her personal views and habits are. She too has had to learn to compromise idealism with practicality. We all have to find our own way. This book gives us a heads-up on all the ways there are to drink clean (or dirty) water.
This is the first title in the Sister Frevisse Medieval Mystery series. It takes place in 1431 at St. Fredeswide’s Priory in England. The frail and saintly novice Thomasine is close to making her final vows, but her aunt, the blaspheming, hard-drinking Lady Ermentrude has other plans for Thomasine. When Ermentrude dies suddenly, Sister Frevisse, the hosteler of the priory and an amateur sleuth, fears murder and the most likely suspect is Thomasine.