I’ve been so caught up in planning my upcoming trip to Argentina that it was almost a relief to take a look at this month’s Front Table and be reminded that there are so many other places in the world to think and read about. While I’ve been focusing on South America, great authors have been writing about Asia and England and Africa and more.
Books about Hawaii always catch my eye. I’ve never been there (yes, shameful, I know) and would love to go. Alan Brennert’s new novel, Honolulu, transports us to the world of early twentieth century Hawaii. A young woman named Regret, seeking to escape the restrictions of Korean society, has agreed to come to the islands as a picture bride. The prosperous husband she was expecting turns out to be a rough plantation worker who drinks and gambles. She eventually escapes him and flees to Honolulu, building a new identity as Jin and a new business with the help of fellow mail-order brides. Brennert, the author of the bestselling Moloka’i, weaves fascinating episodes of real Hawaiian history into Jin’s story and captures the exciting multi-ethnic culture of our youngest state. ($24.95)
Ooh, I see Jason Goodwin’s Ottoman detective, Yashim, is travelling to Venice in his latest mystery, The Bellini Card. In the third installment of this series, Goodwin’s unique eunuch investigator is sent by the new sultan to Venice to track down a lost portrait of Mahmut the Conqueror painted by Gentile Bellini, a quest that is opposed by the sly vizier. Yashim compromises by sending his friend the Polish ambassador in his place whose bumbling requires Yashim’s presence after all. With the jockeying for power in the court of the new sultan and a murderer stalking the canals of La Serenissima, Yashim must tread lightly indeed to satisfy all parties. I wonder if it surprises Goodwin that, after establishing himself as a respectable travel writer, he’s achieved commercial success as a mystery author. Goodwin won an Edgar for the first book in this series and got good reviews for the second. This new volume should win him even more fans. ($25.00)
Set in roughly the same the same time period as the Goodwin’s mystery, Katharine McMahon’s historical novel, The Rose of Sebastopol, tells a story of a typical Victorian English woman who becomes caught up in the stirring and brutal events of the Crimean War. Mariella is a quiet young woman in London, devoted to her sewing, her handsome surgeon fiancé, and her beautiful and wild cousin Rosa. Her fiancé, Henry, is serving as a doctor with the army in Crimea and Rosa has impulsively run off to offer her services as a nurse to Florence Nightingale. When Mariella hears that Henry in ill and recuperating in Italy she rushes to his side only to learn that Rosa has disappeared. She decides she must go in search of her cousin in the devastated city of Sebastopol. McMahon does a masterful job of evoking the scenery and the sensibilities of the Victorian world, drawing the reader into the lives of her characters. There’s lots of good bookseller buzz on this one. ($24.95)
Enough with the historical novels, let’s try something contemporary. The book flap of Chris Cleave’s novel, Little Bee, uses a cutesy trick of refusing to tell you anything about the story but don’t let that put you off. This well-written tale of a young girl escaping from the oil-fueled violence of Nigeria to the suburban home of a recently widowed English woman does have plot twists that shouldn’t be revealed by a careless reviewer but I can tell you that it’s funny in some places and horrifying in others. Cleave does a remarkable job of writing in Little Bee’s first person voice, describing her new environment with combination of wide-eyed wonder and shrewd judgment gained through hard experience. With its juxtaposition of middle-class suburban drama and refugee desperation, Little Bee will be a natural for book club discussions. ($24.00)
Let’s follow that African thread to a non-fiction title. In The Blue Sweater, Jana Novogratz relates the story of her aha moment. A successful investment banker, she was working in Rwanda when she spotted a boy wearing a distinctive blue sweater she had donated to Goodwill years before. This clear symbol of the interconnected nature of our modern world confirmed her determination to use her banking skills to improve the condition of struggling populations. Part memoir of her African experiences and part insider’s view of the mixed results of efforts of international philanthropic institutions, Novogratz explains how we can best utilize the financial power of companies and individuals through microfinancing and corporate responsibility. Novogratz is a very smart woman with strong experience in the field. She definitely is worth listening to on this subject. ($24.95)
Fortunately, I ignored the rather odd cover and picked up Xinran’s China Witness to find my favorite book of the month. A Beijing-born journalist now based in London, Xinran specializes in the kind of personal interview history that can capture an era so vividly just as Studs Terkel did with his classic works on the Depression and World War II. Through years of traveling around the country, she collected these stories of people, now elderly, who lived through the great upheaval of the Chinese Revolution and the Cultural Revolution. In a conversational style, she coaxes ordinary people to explain how these major events affected their lives. Some were first hand-witnesses to such defining moments as the Long March, some were political prisoners, some just working people trying to get along. Xinran does a wonderful job letting the voices of her countrymen speak of sorrows and triumphs, telling the many tales of the birth of a modern nation. ($28.95)
Have you been letting some interesting part of the world escape your notice? Come in and see what else you may find on the Front Table.
Tags: belllini card, blue sweater, books, china witness, hawaii, little bee, rose of sebastopol, travel
