The Last Watchman of Old Cairo a novel by Michael David Lukas

The Last Watchman of Old Cairo, on sale 10 April 2018, reminded me of a fresh baked loaf of challah. Three entwined stories made for a rich story, steeped in symbolism and at the end of the day just something you want to consume and enjoy.

Mr. Lukas managed to really grab my attention with the first scene, dunking his reader into the waters of the Nile c. 1000CE. By the end of the chapter I had my phone balanced on my knee ready to google, when suddenly the time and tone shifted: Berkeley, 2000CE. Five chapters in the year 1000, five in 1897 and six in the year 2000 was more than enough for me to become invested in each storyline.

Of the three stories you follow, the thread that keeps them bound together is the al-Raqb family- the family of every watchman of the Ibn Ezra synagogue in Cairo. The book opens with the first watchman, Ali, and ends with the son of the last watchman wrestling with his family's past. In between the old and new are stitched together patiently by twin sisters and patrons of the historical realm who are assisting Cambridge University in collecting historical documents.

The theme of endlessness, of chains of descendants, chains of decision making, and the passage of rituals, secrets, and time all meld together in this mesmerizing story. Lukas did very well in creating relatable, flawed characters you can empathize with and an environment that leaves you wanting to know more.

I'd recommend this book wholeheartedly to anyone who enjoys historical fiction, a good read, or even someone who is interested in Egypt or Cairo.

See you next time

The Brightest Sun by Adrienne Benson

This post is late because I wasn't sure if I wanted to publish it at all. You see, I hated this book so much that I wasn't sure I wanted to give it any sort of extra publicity at all. That being said, I feel like it would be disingenuous to only post books that I enjoyed instead of pointing out problematic books of our era. With that being said, here we go:

Adrienne Benson managed to write a book that managed to be an insult to everyone reading it. She had three main  characters, the white woman who escapes her problems by going to Africa, the other white woman who escapes her problems by going to Africa, and the Maasai woman whose problems can only be fixed by the white woman fleeing reality.

I don't even want to talk about the story here, what I want to talk about is the trend I have seen of books written by people with very narrow exposure to a culture with their main settings in that culture. In the author bio we see she was brought up by aid workers across sub-Saharan Africa, but never in one place too long. She was not exposed to village life, and was not involved with the local community. She has also written for buzzfeed, which shows as her writing style is easy to follow and the narrative is clear.

Ms. Benson also served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Nepal. I'm a returned PCV myself, and I would feel woefully unprepared to write a novel about village life in Ghana despite my two years steeped in the culture. Benson crosses a boundary that stopped being appropriate to cross decades ago, and she does it poorly.

Why am I so mad? Well, here's the sentence that made me quit the book for a solid four days before I could pick the piece of trash back up again, "All the mothers there were fine-tuned to the concept of benign neglect; that was the Maasai way." 

Let me say that I understand what she was attempting to convey, but this hamhanded morally superior tone was the opposite of informing the reader. In fact I think it informs us a lot more of the author than of the tribe she pretends to know.

I would recommend this book to a guttertrash fire or recycling plant, this will be the first book of this blog that I do not share with another person; do not buy this book.

White Rabbit by Caleb Roehrig

White Rabbit is a young adult mystery novel by Caleb Roehrig. If this novel had featured your stereotypical scooby-squad protagonists I would have suggested to skip it; fortunately for us that is not the case.

White Rabbit has a very pulp feel to it: kids stumble onto a crime scene, and the kids have to figure it out before the adults do. The main story has everything you'd expect from a kid's mystery book: heaps of dead bodies, romance between leads, and a few 11th hour twists to throw the honor students in the audience off their game.

So why am I still recommending this 330pg cliché? Because of representation. The fact that the book is so cookie cutter is exactly why it's a great book to give impressionable kids. It not only addresses the stigmas attached to figuring out your own non-heteronormative sexuality at a tender age, but also addresses the very real homophobia and uncertainty people feel when they come out.

White Rabbit's a typical book you'd find battered and dog eared sticking out of a thrift store backpack on the bus. It's honestly wonderful to see a kids book written for kids that doesn't have a heavy handed message so much as it just happens to have representation and it's unashamed of itself for that selfsame reason.

I would recommend this book to any middle schooler or early high schooler, as it's an interesting read and makes the reader evaluate facts and analyze differing narratives in an easy to manage level. I would double recommend to any kids who are questioning their sexuality or who have friends who are going through that struggle.

Caleb Roehrig goes to great length to garner the audiences empathy without trying to make the character's backstories total sob stories, and for that Roehrig has my respect.

The Girls in the Picture (a novel) by Melanie Benjamin

The Girls in the Picture by Melanie Benjamin is, in the same vein as Song of a Captive Bird, a historical novelization- and a very good one at that.

This book follows Hollywood's first power duo of two friends who became the first movie star and first major woman screenplay writer respectively.

Following the journey of Frances Marion and Mary Pickford from 1914 until 1969, we see two women find their own in a world that is not at all soft to women. Many times throughout the book their gender roles and struggles with everything their male costars didn't have to came to light. Even abortion was touched upon- albeit pretty late in the story considering all the flings alluded to.

One thing that didn't sit well with me was that the book is a huge feminist message and I love it! But when Birth of a Nation is released in 1918 their reactions to it are classic film school, "no one had ever seen this, we wanted to do that, etc." never once is race mentioned.

For the uninitiated Birth of a Nation is a KKK marketing movie that managed to breathe life into the struggling organization. It's praised to this day as the pioneer of most film techniques we still use today, and is taught as such in film school. By ignoring its underlying message, I feel Melanie Benjamin undercut her own; you can't place one struggle above another, and you certainly can't erase one struggle in order to better highlight your own. It wasn't until the very last act of the book that anything about race was mentioned again, in the context of Mary's (also famous movie star) husband being asked if he was "actually a darkie" as he had very sun tanned skin for the day. That's it, race is never mentioned again.

I was also disappointed by the prose in this book, unlike the last few I have reviewed which lifted off the page like a song, this book was written more like a conversation. It was engaging and well done, but not exactly the calibur of speech I would expect from a New York Times bestselling author.

To recap: The Girls in the Picture is a very well written look into the early cinema scene, a beautiful retelling of a friendship between two strong women and their careers. The Girls in the Picture is also a book with no non-white characters set in a time where the highest praise for a film was saved for a pro-klan picture which made me feel like a huge avenue Benjamin could have gone down was wasted.

That being said, I recommend this book to anyone who has an interest in film and film history. I found myself popping over to wikipedia and youtube to follow the bread crumb trail to old forgotten movies and movie stars, it was a real treat to be learning about something I had no clue even existed.

That's it for this week- and I know I technically cheated as the book was released 16 Jan 2018 but you'll have to take my word for it that I read it before then. 

The Ensemble (a novel) by Aja Gabel

The Ensemble made me feel like a kid at the adults table. I was both fascinated by everything being said, and the prose used in saying it, but also totally lacking in enough background to understand the richness of what was being said.

I loved the way this book was written. It was clearly written to feel like a musical movement, and it achieved that aim. I typically take notes while reading my weekly books. A small corner of the page is kept for my favorite quotes. This was the first book that I filled, then over filled the little quote corner.

Aja Gabel flings you into the deep end of the lifestyle, terminology, and relationships of a quartet. There are five main characters: two violinists, a viola player- violist?, and a cellist, the fifth is the quartet itself. Their group is a living, breathing, growing, maturing character in and of itself, and I love that it both was a stand in for life and at the same time was their life.

Though the backdrop may have been foreign, the growing pains of a career, the passage of time going both too slowly and too quickly, were all themes the reader can understand and identify with. Each character is flawed, and each character grows, Gabel managed to juggle all five equally. I appreciated that each music choice fit well with the theme of the group, with the general tone of the chapter.

Despite the characters' very clear thoughts on listening to music while reading being both heinous and an impossibility, I found that reading The Ensemble was much improved while listening to the various pieces the group was practicing, performing, or simply reflecting upon. I learned a lot more about classical music and composers than I expected to when I grabbed this novel off of the shelf, and I don't regret it in the least.

I won't lie, though, with as little as I do know about music and professional musicians, reading this book was like watching a movie through a keyhole. It was a slog to get through some parts, but the parts that were clear were totally worth it, and I enjoyed every chapter once I had picked up the thread or looked up the term that had previously been alphabet soup on the page to me. In an odd way Aja's confidence in her audience to understand this new scene she had thrown them in to reminded me of my first time reading Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian. I understood what was happening, but was reading through the fog that was the forgotten language and foreign ranching terms.

In the end I would recommend this book to anyone who pursues a passion of their own relentlessly, anyone who loves classical music, and any chamber music musician in your life. I also recommend it to anyone who loves delicate prose and deep emotion without dialogue.

That's it for this week, thank you for reading! If you have book suggestions let me know.

Children of Blood and Bone by Tomi Adeyemi

Children of Blood and Bone is a young adult fantasy novel written by Nigerian-American Tomi Adeyemi. The setting is very Nigerian, yet a fantasy setting with large cats ridden like horses, maji, knight-like guards, and fictional kingdoms.

Let's just say this off the bat: It's really, really refreshing to read a fantasy book that isn't set in fantasy England. Fantasy Nigeria was incredibly well done, and just as fleshed out as you could imagine, it was great.

Okay, so into the book review! I loved Children of Blood and Bone. Were there a couple YA fantasy tropes? Sure, but that didn't detract from the depth of this novel. When I say depth, I mean as the target audience of a young person of non-African background you can read this book and have a really good time. On the other hand, if you are familiar with Nigerian history, black history, and socioeconomic issues between West Africans, or West Africa and the world, this book doesn't just talk to you, it sings to you.

Small details from a maji's hair being flat when she has no power, and full and curly into a mane when she does turn social expectations on their head. The class system and obsession with lighter skin tones is addressed in a subtle way. The obvious undertone of talking about race and race based power is done so well that you can say that it is both directly addressed, and yet not so overt that a young reader would pick up on everything Adeyemi is saying.

Another fantastic touch that I would like to bring up was that instead of making up a magical language, Adeyemi simply used Yoruba as the language of the maji. Why is this important? Well, Nigeria is a world power, a strong economy, and a beautiful multilayered nation. Now how many people would say they are interested in learning Yoruba before reading this book? Before you say to me that Yoruba only has a very minor application that it could be useful for, let me remind you that High Valyrian (from Game of Thrones/A Song of Ice And Fire) and Klingon (from Star Trek) are actual language options on DuoLingo language learning software, while Yoruba is not. I love that she's using her platform to subtlety get audiences interested in cultures and languages that just aren't apparent in most fantasy, given that most fantasy is set firmly in the West.

In summary, this book was amazing, and I would definitely gift it to any young reader or fantasy buff in my friend group. I can see why it's already gotten a 17 country release deal and a motion picture deal as well. I look forward to seeing Adeyemi's future works, as she's now firmly on my radar.

Song of a Captive Bird by Jasmin Darznik

Song of a Captive Bird is a novelization of the life of Forugh Farrokhzad, Persian poet and icon of the feminist movement in Iran who came into her own in the 1950s.

The choice to write this as a novel instead of a biography allows Darznik to really delve into the inner turmoil of Forugh throughout her life of crazy twists and turns, with the harsh backdrop of male dominated Iran, and the rise of the Islamic laws in the country after the Iranian coup of 1953. I really enjoyed the historical fiction feel to it. I would say the writing style was not unlike Angela's Ashes by Frank McCourt, which is to say it is an incredibly hard story to read, but it's told in a much softened tone so as to feel almost dreamlike through the trying times our protagonist struggles through.

The slow, almost meandering pace of the book allows these very real events to set a solid timeline. Forugh, however, seems almost overwhelmed by the passage of time, and totally unprepared for each next step that meets her because of it. Darznik by no means models Forugh as a fiery, passionate leader- instead she's portrayed as a woman who jumps into things without thinking, and by dealing with the consequences she is propelled into a celebrity status she never truly asked for. This realism of her lack of choice, of a woman whose works became a black market commodity across Iran for a long time without her meaning them to be, is probably my favorite part about how the book is written.

Darznik's research into the life of Farrokhzad was based on interviews, her works, and various things written about her (slanderous or no). Farrokhzad was a fascinating figure, and probably the first to manage to break out the mold of a 'poetess' and into a poet.

I thoroughly enjoyed this novel from start to finish, and I would recommend it to anyone who enjoys learning a bit more about art history, Iran, 1950s style Persian feminism, or just about a woman's struggle to be seen as a person, instead of a commodity.

Thanks for reading my first post, Check back next Saturday for another.

-Bekah