“The Memory of Love” by Aminatta Forna, available from Rivershare libraries
I don’t remember where or when I first heard of this book, but I remember thinking that I would love it. As it turns out, I was right.
Shortly after the end of hostilities, psychologist Adrian Lockheart travels from his home in London to Sierra Leone to help people suffering from the effects of a long and bloody civil war. There he meets Kai, a young surgeon, and Elias Cole, an elderly patient. As Adrian befriends Kai and acts as a kind of confessor to Elias, he discovers that both men hold secrets they would rather not come to light.
At the outset, the story is a bit hard to follow. The reader is dropped into one of Elias’s recollections in the first chapter, while the second chapter follows Adrian. It took me about four chapters (approximately 30 pages) to get accustomed to the alternating format, and get a feel for who the characters are. After those initial chapters, I was hooked.
I loved Forna’s writing: fluid and descriptive, it makes the story that much more heartbreakingly beautiful. A brief warning, however. This is not a book that can be easily read if the room is full of distractions. So sequester yourself in a quiet room, bring your reading A-game, and enjoy.
“The Memory of Love” will appeal to lovers of literary fiction, those who enjoy stories of modern history or post-colonial African history, and those who enjoy subtle mystery centered on individual characters.
This was one of the books we read and discussed for Global Gathering Brazil as Amado is one of the most famous of Brazilian fiction authors. The action takes place in 1925 in a town called Ilheus (which happens to be a Sister City of Davenport, Iowa). The theme is Progress, how much and how fast. Tradition has it that if a wife is having an affair, a husband has the right (or, in fact, is obligated) to murder both wife and lover. The husband will be found innocent of wrong-doing. The story revolves around this tradition. The main character, Gabriela, is an unusual person–simple and poor, but also talented (in cooking and loving), empathetic, and free of societal constraints–that is, until she and an up-and-coming businessman fall in love and he convinces her to marry him.
The German American Heritage Center book discussion group discussed Measuring the World this month. It is a novel about the explorer Alexander von Humboldt and the mathematician Carl Friedrich Gauss. They both did a lot of measuring apparently but one did it in a physically active way and the other thought up formulas to measure the earth and the paths of asteroids without having to go anywhere. Kehlmann explores their lives in a most philosophically charming way. He has them meet when they are quite old. The basic facts of their lives are accurate–we checked that out in the Encyclopedia Britannica–but Kehlmann’s enhancements make them come alive. They are personable and eccentric and droll. For more on Humboldt in nonfiction, take a look at Humboldt’s Cosmos by Gerard Helferich, 508.8 HE, or The Humboldt Current by Aaron Sachs, 508.092 SA; or for something Humboldt wrote himself, try Jaguars & Electric Eels, 918.0413 HU. We didn’t have as much on Gauss on the shelves, but my daughter-in-law who majored in computer science told me all about degaussing old computers (“Degaussing a monitor restores its magnetic field to normal. It also makes the screen do colorful wiggly things in the process and makes an interesting noise. If you see a monitor with a degaussing option or a button with a magnet with a ‘no’ sign on it, try it some time!”) and there’s an inscrutable (to me) chapter about Gauss in Stephen Hawking’s book God Created the Integers, 510 GO. Another fun book is Gonzo Gizmos: Projects and Devices to Channel Your Inner Geek (621.381 FI) which includes instructions for building a Gauss rifle (a magnetic linear accelerator). The shopping list is nine steel balls, sticky tape, four magnets, wooden ruler that has a groove in the top, and a sharp knife. After reading Measuring the World, it was a lot of fun making connections to all sorts of topics in all sorts of places and, of course, there was the joy of discussing that intriguing story. Kudos to the translator Carol Brown Janeway! I’m looking forward to Kehlmann’s next book to be published in the U.S. this month (September 2010): Fame, a series of “nine interconnected short stories that cleverly explore the seductive nature of fame–and fiction’s role in creating it.” (starred review in Kirkus, August 1, 2010)
Andras Levi, a young Jewish man from Budapest, receives a scholarship to study architecture in Paris. While a student in the City of Light, he falls in love with Klara, also a refugee from Budapest.