The Autobiography of Mrs. Tom Thumb (2011) By Melanie Benjamin

Lavinia Warren Bump, a.k.a. “Vinnie” or, as she was better known, Mrs. Tom Thumb, started to write her autobiography several times, but never got around to completing it before her death in 1919.  Her attempts were always thwarted by a desire to leave out unpleasant details, and there had been a lot of unpleasant details.   Nearly a century later, author Melanie Benjamin picked up Vinnie’s notes, undertook some great research, and filled in those details.  The result is a fun novel titled The Autobiography of Mrs. Tom Thumb. 

Now before you dismiss the notion of this book, consider this:  we are talking about a real life person, who while little in stature, was huge in life.  She was a trusted colleague of P.T. Barnum, and dined with several Presidents, the Vanderbilts, the Astors, and even Queen Victoria.  Her tours, before and after her marriage to General Tom Thumb (perhaps one of the first living show business celebrities who could truly be considered world famous) spanned such historical times and settings as the Mississippi River towns of the Mark Twain era, the advent of the abolitionist movement and the full extent of the Civil War, entertaining for pre-General pre-President Ulysses Grant & his wife at their Galena home, being two of the earliest  passengers  on the transcontinental railroad, attempted stage coach robberies, and a World Tour that included London, Paris, Japan, Australia while it was still a backwater colony, Siam (Thailand), India and the Pyramids.   

Each chapter of the book begins with news clippings (Thomas Edison’s first lighted Christmas Tree for instance) that mark the year.  Better yet, with its in-depth and compelling personal history, combined with author Melanie Benjamin’s style of writing, it is an absolutely engaging book.  Great summer read.

Detroit City Is the Place to Be (2012) By Mark Binelli

Being originally from Gary, Indiana, there is nothing I enjoy more than a story about Detroit, it’s always nice to see a city that has actually fallen further.  Yet, the story of Detroit is really nothing more than an extended version of what has befallen Gary.  It, perhaps, fell further merely because it was larger, a matter of scale.

The similarities far outweigh the differences.  I’m old enough to remember Gary as economically vibrant, gritty mind you, but vibrant.   One either worked at U.S. Steel -- "the big mill" -- or one of the numerous smaller mills or their hundreds of supporting industries.  You not only worked in the city, you shopped on Broadway, went to games & concerts at Memorial Auditorium, and movies at The Palace.  In my family these memories go even deeper, we were second generation; my mother was also born in Gary. 

Her memories are stronger, if more distant, harking back to somewhat of a rivalry with the bigger city.  They would argue World War II never could have been won without the tanks built in Detroit; while in Indiana we would point out those tanks would not have been built without the steel made in Gary.   They had Diana Ross and the UAW, we had Michael Jackson and the USW.  It was a different era to be sure.

The heartbreak is there, though it is New Jersey’s Bruce Springsteen that captures it best with his music, the ballad My Hometown  in particular.  When I take the South Shore RR through (never to) Gary, or friends travel I-94 to Michigan (never to Detroit), it remains with you. It’s in our genetic make-up, the reason we always jump at the opportunity to see a rebirth that will, likely, never come.  Such were the thoughts when I picked up Detroit City Is the Place to Be by Mark Binelli, a native of the motor city.  Privately, deep down, we hope, against reality.

With a subtitle of The Afterlife of an American Metropolis, Binelli’s book promised something other than a recitation of ills.  But alas, it did not deliver.  At a precise 300 pages, it’s merely another assembly line rehash, chapters after chapter written for nothing more than their shock value.  I suppose that’s what sells, but I for one feel short-changed.  We don’t need another list, we are perfectly capable of writing one ourselves. 

Yet, buried within Mr. Binelli’s docudrama are snippets of answers to the “what’s next” question: urban pioneer stories that are far more interesting than the urban wasteland saga.  Sadly, one had to wade through yesterday’s news to find them.

Do I recommend this book?  Maybe, but please, check it out at the library, don’t buy it.  The profiteers have already picked Detroit clean.

FOLLOW-UP 6/19/2013:  Gary, Indiana

Anathem (2008) By Neal Stephenson

If you are looking for lite reading, move on.  If you are looking for a book where every paragraph will challenge you, pick up Neal Stephenson's Anathem, and don't even think you will only need to devote a week's time to the book.  At 932 pages -- not counting the glossary and supplements, including geometric diagrams -- this book took me nearly 3 months to read.  Was it worth it?  Yes.

Stephenson is the master of what is known as "speculative fiction."  I had previously read and reviewed (November 2011) his book Snow Crash, and loved it, even though it was initially a tough read.  Compared to Anathem, Snow Crash is a children's bedtime story.

Speculative fiction "is an umbrella term encompassing the more fantastical fiction genres, specifically science fiction, fantasy, horror, weird fiction, supernatural fiction, superhero fiction, utopian and dystopian fiction, apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction, and alternate history in literature as well as related static, motion, and virtual arts." [Wikipedia]

Anathem is not Flash Gordon, or even Star Trek ... it's more like Sir Arthur Clarke on LSD.

In Anathem, a future Earth that is recovering from several millennia of warfare, has settled down into an arrangement whereby the smartest people on the planet are selected to live in academic monasteries called “Maths” where they can postulate to their hearts content.  But, there’s a catch:  they are, for all practical purposes, employees of the general population known as "the Saeculars.” The plot, with intrigue to spare, and grossly oversimplified by me, is this:  the Saeculars put the Maths to work at figuring out how to fight off an invading species from another universe/dimension.

The book has multiple layers of linguistics, multiple layers of scientific theories, competing schools of philosophy and numerous denominations of theology, all tied together by an action-story.  All in all, fun stuff.   And though I’m sure a re-read will have me discovering many things I have surely missed this first time around, I can’t imagine working up the energy required to read this book again, at least until the next Centennial Apert.

Midnight's Children (1981) By Salman Rushdie

Coming to a theater near you!  Maybe, maybe not.  Late last year famed Indian film director Deepa Mehta released a movie adaptation of Salman Rushdie’s book Midnight’s Children, though you’d never know it by looking at the cinema listings in Chicago, home to a huge Desi diaspora (Indian and Pakistani) population.  Part of the reason the movie hasn’t opened here yet is because controversy seems to follow Rushdie (author of The Satanic Verses).  But perhaps a bigger reason it’s not playing in Chicago is the decline in the number of “art” theaters in the city, a sad commentary.  If this movie is even a fraction as entertaining as the book, it will be packing movie houses, if they ever get it distributed coherently. 

Click here for: Movie Trailer

The book Midnight’s Children is a historical epic masked as a fable; or perhaps a fable masked as a historical epic.  It tells the story of 1,000 children born at the stroke of midnight on August 15, 1947 – the time and date of India’s independence from British colonial rule.  Their life stories parallel that of their country’s modern history. 

Each of the children grows up to discover they have some magical power, though they don’t at first, realize why.  The main character in the fable is Saleem Sinai, whose magical power is telepathy.  He hears other peoples’ thoughts and has the ability to convene a teleconference of the other children during their dreams.

Saleem is born to wealthy parents … well actually, no.  Saleem is born at the same time as a rich kid.  The nurse at the hospital makes the life altering decision to switch babies while no one is looking – destining poor to be rich, and rich to be poor.  The two boys will meet again when Saleem accidently convenes the first Congress of “midnight’s children” in his dreams one night.  They will hold vastly different perceptions on everything, mirroring the rich/poor divide of India as a whole.

An excellent read, read it for the history, read it for the fable, and hopefully see the movie.

The Gift of Rain (2008) By Tan Twan Eng

The cover of The Gift of Rain by Tan Twan Eng includes a review blurb calling it "Glorious," praise so over-the-top it nearly prevented me from buying the book.  If a book needs such intense marketing, I figured, there must be something terribly wrong with it.  Fortunately, I purchased the book anyway.  It now joins James Baldwin's Another Country and John Steinbeck's classic The Grapes of Wrath on the list of the best books I've ever read -- all the more amazing when one realizes it is Mr. Eng's first book.  Praise indeed.

One might categorize The Gift of Rain as a war narrative, though forcing it into that genre does not begin to explain its impact.  Yes, World War II underlies everything in this book, yet the individual relationships in the story are what make it “glorious.”

The tale Mr. Eng tells is set in Penang, a large island off the northwest coast of Malaysia, and covers the time period of 1939 through the end of World War II.  The story is told to a Japanese woman who has come to Penang some fifty years later in an attempt to find answers about a Japanese diplomat/soldier's final years.  His story is told to her over a period of weeks by a now elderly man named Philip Hutton. 

Hutton is a native of Malaysia, born to a British colonial industrialist and his Chinese immigrant wife. When he was a sixteen year old boy he met the woman’s friend, named Hayato Endo, known as Endo-san.  Hutton’s father had rented Endo-san a small island near the family mansion, not realizing he had been sent to Penang to begin exploring the Malay Peninsula in advance of the Japanese invasion of the country.

The younger Hutton soon becomes a pupil of Aikijutso, with Endo-san serving as his sensei, or tutor/mentor.  This is a subplot that plays a key role in the book, preparing him mentally and physically to be able to navigate the occupation.  The relationship between these two characters survives through a horrific backdrop of war, when little else does.

For an American, or even a Britain (Malaysia was a British colony before and again after the war), this is a version of the war we seldom read – Pearl Harbor is mentioned once, because it occurred the same day the Japanese invasion of Malaysia began, and the Americans are not mentioned again until the news of Hiroshima is announced over Radio-India.  Yet, if one is a war history buff, the Bridge over the River Kwai history is alluded to several times, as Malay prisoners of war, including Hutton’s brother, are sent as forced labor to construct a rail line to China; and there are heart wrenching reports on the Rape of Nanking and other atrocities on the Chinese mainland. 

Late last year, Tan Twan Eng published his second book, The Garden of Evening Mists.  To say the least, it has been added to my summer reading list ... with great anticipation.

Acts of Faith: The Story of an American Muslim, the Struggle for the Soul of a Generation (2007) By Eboo Patel

A few months ago, I read Acts of Faith by Eboo Patel but never got around to writing it up for my Book Blog.  Sadly, this delay has only served to make this post more relevant.  In the days since the bombs exploded at the finish line of the Boston Marathon, the cause of terrorism against noncombatant civilians has once again entered our consciousness.  In the immediate afterward of that stunning week, the President phrased it correctly, despite his critics, when he underscored that perhaps the most important question we should be asking in the ensuing investigation is not how, but why.  Why do two young men, American citizens no less, resort to indiscriminate acts of terror.

It’s not a new question, Eboo Patel, an “all-American boy” from the suburbs of Chicago, with a family lineage deeply connected to the Muslim community of Mumbai, asked it in the years after 9/11.  His book Acts of Faith, written after the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center, examines the topic in a thought provoking series of essays. His mission wasn’t blame, it was prevention. And his conclusion is as strong as it is challenging. 

There is a lesson to be learned from these attacks, and it has been proven repeatedly by civil rights movements around the globe: hatred is learned -- be it racism, religious intolerance, classism between the haves and the have nots, or homophobia.   A child, any child, every child, is born without prejudice.  The prejudices he or she acquires in life are learned from someone, and usually learned without challenge. 

Perhaps it is an over simplification that prejudices are taught, but the consequence of not addressing this viewpoint is clear, painfully clear.  Patel notes, with a sincerity that does not belie the difficulty, that the antidote for such hated is not never-ending warfare, but countering the teaching of hatred with the teaching of tolerance and the acceptance, the joy of, diversity.

Acts of Faith challenges us all to fill this educational void. It is an easy answer for those of us who are advocates of multiculturalism; to borrow a word that defined my generation: imagine.   

Patel’s book was thought provoking, action inspiring, after 9/11.  It remains so in the days after the Boston Marathon.  Someone took it upon themselves to teach those boys hatred.  None of us made it our job to teach them tolerance.  We must address this oversight.

It's Fine By Me (Norwegian, 1992; English translation, 2011) By Per Petterson

There is much to be said for lazily browsing through a bookstore, chances are you’ll find a new author you were unaware of.  Such was the case when I stopped by Sandmeyer's in Chicago’s Printers Row on a wintery day recently and came across It’s Fine By Me, by Per Petterson.  It’s a jewel of a book, plain spoken to the point of being lyrical, and decidely not "purple prose."

First published in Norwegian in 1992, It’s Fine By Me was translated into English in 2011. I guess it fits into the “coming of age” genre, but believe me that is such an insufficient description.  It is, in fact, one of the best written books I’ve read in ages.

Set primarily in Oslo, it is the story of a teenage boy man named Audun Sletten.  He’s the son of an alcoholic; and he’s aspires to become a writer someday.  He’s very well read, and his reading list – Jack London and Ernest Hemingway -- will amaze you, as it clearly inspires him (and Petterson).

Yet, life has its detours.  Just shy of graduation, Audun will drop out of high school and go to work full time, one day a paperboy, the next a union printer.  As the book ends Audun has turned 18, he’s a young man whose adolescence has passed by almost without notice. 

The final chapter details the death of his father, who abandoned the family years earlier.  I doubt there is a son -- in any culture -- who will fail to recognize this near universal father/son dichotomy, a total disconnect between two people who logic says should be close; the funeral, a mourning of a relationship that could have been, more so than one that was.