Lost Boys

If I say “lost boys”, do you think “Peter Pan” or “Sudan”? After reading A Long Way Gone Memoirs of a Boy Soldier by Ishmael Beah you may also think “Sierra Leone”. Beah, now 28, was born and lived in Sierra Leone until he was 18 when he moved to New York. There he finished high school and graduated from Oberlin College. He has written this book in part to expiate the demons that have followed him since he was trapped in the civil war in his home country starting when he was 12. At first impression you may think the connection between Barrie’s boys and Beah tenuous but remember that an early scene of the Lost Boys in Peter Pan is their attempt to shoot Wendy with a bow and arrow after Tinker Bell tells them Wendy is a bird, and convinces them that killing her would bring great favor with Peter. Replace the bow and arrow with an AK-47.

Beah says he has always had a photographic memory. Surely many of the scenes he describes are so horrific as to be unforgettable to anyone. One of the most shocking aspects was the constant use of drugs including cocaine and marijuana by the children. Perhaps that explains in part how they were able to survive the atrocities to which they were witness and in which they acted.

At the age of 16, Beah came under the auspices of UNICEF for “rehabilitation”. Those chapters of the book are equally compelling in their portraits of Beah’s drug withdrawal and the start of his emotional healing.

While this experience is, on the one hand, another example of “man’s inhumanity to man” and to children, it is also a compelling testament to the resilience of those same children. This particular child has grown up to be an articulate and dedicated spokesperson for all children affected by war. Unfortunately there are still far too many children in various countries who continue to suffer the effects of ongoing wars. Far from being trapping in a never ending fantasy of make-believe, these children like Beah are losing a childhood that cannot be reclaimed.

Since its publication, several Australian journalists have made an aggressive challenge to some of the events and the timeline of this memoir. You can read more about the dispute at http://www.slate.com/id/2185928/. Wherever the truth lies, this book has brought well-deserved attention to the serious and on-going problem of child soldiers. It is well worth your time.

Art and Life Collide

The PEN/Faulkner 2008 award was given to Kate Christensen for her novel “The Great Man.” As the newest recipient of this award Ms. Christensen joins some of our book club’s favorite authors and past recipients, such as Ann Patchett for “Bel Canto” in 2002, Michael Cunningham for “The Hours” in 1999 and David Guterson for “Snow Falling on Cedars” in 1995.

“The Great Man” is the story of Oscar Feldman a renowned painter living and working in New York city in the forties and fifties. The story opens with Oscar’s obituary in the New York Times in 2001. It tells of Oscar’s innovative work as a painter of only one subject, the female nude. His work was prized by collectors and hung in many leading museums in the country. The obituary states that Oscar left his wife Abigail, his son Ethan and his sister Maxine Feldman a famous painter in her own right.

What the obituary did not state was that Oscar had another family living in Brooklyn. His long-time mistress, Teddy St. Cloud and their twin daughters learned that Oscar died when they read the obituary. The story evolves as two rival biographers begin to interview the women in Oscar’s life. Through the stories that Abigail, Maxine and Teddy relate, the reader learns that Oscar was not the great man that everyone thought he was. These women loved Oscar but they are revealed as the “great” ones. They have supported Oscar, emotionally, financially and physically, throughout his life. Kate Christensen portrays these women as funny, strong and completely in charge. The heart of the book is Ms. Christensen’s wonderful characters. Abigail the long suffering wife, who patiently cares for their autistic son, is someone of great strength and integrity. Maxine, Oscar’s sister, is a cranky, eighty four year old, lesbian painter who uses four letter words and drinks whiskey on the rocks. And, Teddy the seventy four year old, smart, sexy mistress lived her life for Oscar, was content to share a small part of it and asked for little.

The stories and the women collide as a secret “bet” and an art related scandal are revealed. The weaknesses of the great man are also revealed. “The great man,” said Teddy, “was the biggest human baby in all of history. That‘s no secret.” Kate Christensen is a witty, engaging observer of the art world in New York. The two biographers, in the end, write books that tell very different stories. But, the final story is that behind “great” men are the women who prop them up, forgive them and make them great.

All About Alice

Alice Munro has been writing short stories for more than fifty years. Many are set in rural southwestern Ontario where she was born and raised. They are often about women – their strengths and weaknesses, their passions and their illnesses. Munro has claimed that she is not an autobiographical writer, but her woman characters often seem to reflect the author's own feelings. Her newest collection, The View from Castle Rock, edges much closer to the autobiographical line. In Part One “No Advantages” she tells stories about her Scottish ancestors who left the Ettrick Valley (described by the Statistical Account of Scotland in 1799 as having “no advantages”) and came to North America. The names, dates and events are real, gathered from family letters, but Munro imagines the conversations and personality quirks that flesh out the facts. They include a wonderfully imagined description of a six week sea voyage from Scotland to Montreal by Munro's ancestors in1818.

Part Two is called “Home”, and these stories, written in the first person, are Munro's memories of her own life. In the Foreword she stated that the stories were “not memoirs, but they were closer to my own life than the other stories I had written...I was...exploring a life, my own life, but not in an austere or rigorously factual way”. They begin with memories of her childhood in which her future as a storyteller can already be glimpsed. As a teenager she loves to relay news and gossip from town to her parents on their farm. But she must do it carefully:”I had learned how to do this in a way that would not get me rebuked for being sarcastic or vulgar or told that I was too smart for my own good. I had mastered a deadpan, even demure style that could make people laugh even when they thought they shouldn't and that made it hard to tell whether I was innocent or malicious”. My favorites from this section include “Lying Under the Apple Tree”, in which she describes a secret teenage romance in a way that is both touching and humorous, and “Hired Girl”, where she works for a summer as a maid for a wealthy family at their summer home on an island in the Georgian Bay. Her storyteller talent again emerges as she enthralls the pampered daughter with exaggerated tales of her deprived life - walking barefoot to school and living on a diet of dandelion leaves. She deftly shows us how the lives of the very rich looked to an impressionable teenager.

I won't say that this is my favorite Alice Munro collection, but if you have enjoyed her stories I think you will appreciate getting a closer look at this wonderful writer and her history.

Art and Science Together

Andrea Barrett is one of those rare individuals who can successfully combine art and science. The proof is on display in full force in her book Ship Fever, a collection of seven short stories and a novella of the same name, which won the National Book Award in 1996.

Barrett majored in biology as an undergraduate. As a graduate student she started but did not finish programs in zoology and in medieval history. Throughout, she was a dedicated reader of fiction. When she finally turned to writing, she brought all of this background with her. The stories in this book are woven around actual historical scientists (Carl Linnaeus, Gregor Mendel, Charles Darwin); scientific theories (the migration of swallows, as an example); and historical events such as the Irish potato famine.

It would be hard for me to pick a favorite among the stories but, if pressed, I guess it would be “Rare Bird.” In the 18^th century, the prevailing theory, supported by Linnaeus, was that swallows hibernated underwater in the winter – sounds unbelievable now. Two women, a spinster and a widow, make their own attempt to disprove this theory showing themselves to be as elusive as their subjects.

The novella of the title, “Ship Fever”, takes place during the period of the Irish potato famine of the mid-19^th century. It turns out that the largest emigration from Ireland was to Canada (rather than to New York as we may have come to understand). But having left the starvation of their homeland, the voyageurs had still another struggle on their hands while in transit: an epidemic of “ship fever” which we now call typhus. Very little was understood at the time about the ways in which the disease was transmitted. As a result the passengers arriving in Canada were quarantined on an island until they could be examined and judged disease-free. The conditions on the arriving ships and on the island were more than deplorable. The story is that of a young idealistic doctor who volunteers to serve on the island.

The story raised several troubling questions for me. Why was this part of the Irish potato famine history so little known? How would we react today if or when there really were a global outbreak such as SARS? Would we be able to control the suspicion and paranoia? How will we deal with the same dilemma in the story: the allocation of scarce resources among a population of greater numbers? Who will be the real heroes and heroines?