The year of magical thinking, Joan Didion

The book sat on my shelf for a few weeks, staring.
Well we all have someone to grieve I guess. And as I tried to make a decision, I knew I should expect this memoir to bring it all up again.
My reading place is the bed. Half an hour, an hour every night. So I read the first pages before going to sleep.
Dreams were terrible and revealing and I must say they also made me pretty angry: am I still there?
So I read the rest of the book in public places, or while doing something else, or even at work. This distracted me and forced me to compose myself and, basically, try not to cry.

Joan Didion starts to write a year after her husband's death, which falls on her just before dinner, right after visiting their daughter at the hospital. The following year is like a broken record that keeps playing the same note - where is the beloved person, could I have done something to save him, how could I possibly not think I still had so much to tell him, how could he come back if I gave away all his shoes?
And as time passes, what were we doing today last year?
Then the year is over, and this question has no answers.

We stopped talking about death in our society. Dionne refers to a few authoritative sources to explain the sense of shame and guilt about death and grieving. This is not an easy read, and leaves you nothing more than awareness.
And Mrs Didion survived.
Just don't read it before going to sleep.

The no.1 ladies' detective agency, Alexander McCall Smith

Opens the author's well known Botswana series.
Premise: I'm somewhat suspicious of serialized novels. The Abacus edition I've read claims that film director Minghella is (was?) bound to make a film version. Just for a change.
Well, at least rights still go to the author here (see Harry Potter).

Forget the "African Miss Marple" kind of review: to me, the biggest surprise was not Mma Ramotswe's wisdom and shrewdness, but the careless way we are introduced into the world of Gaborone, Botswana.
Africa is not the kind of set we European readers are used to seeing and reading adventures into; it is in fact a whole new world, which Mc Call Smith presents us in nice colourful shots. Despite the plain, almost naive style of writing, we smell the bush and hear the evening and touch the thorn trees. Like good-willed tourists allowed for a tea into a local home.

But that is all.
Accidentally, we are told that here women are not supposed to open detective agencies, that black magic still exists and "progress" has just started out.
Despite all this there's no trace of social clash nor discontent. Mma Ramotswe is a bearer of quiet traditional values and homeliness: so don't fear revolutions and carry on with your holiday.

The book is really only about mysterious cases which she solves simply and plainly, with no external complications. It is indeed a lovely read to pass your time before going to sleep.

Never alone in the garden, Paolo Pejrone

I don't think this little book has been translated into any other language; the original Italian title is "in giardino non si è mai soli". Pejrone is a garden architect, Russell Page was his teacher and mentor.

This may seem to be only a collection of "reviews" about gardens, garden centres and gardeners; it does require a certain level of knowledge and -sure enough- passion for the subject.
But as the title shows, it is also a powerful metaphor of the author's love for plants and, finally, life. The reader walks through trees and seasons contemplating nature's mechanisms of selection, reproduction, protection. Some gardens are prey to urban mistreatment, others are like hidden jewels.
Every good gardener knows: life is but a whim, and there's nothing more intimate than growing strawberries, putting bulbs to sleep in the summer, and getting to know someone by the plants they chose for their garden.

Someone to run with (David Grossman)

If you've never been to Jerusalem, embark on this trip with Dinka the dog.
There'll be no tourist-like hanging around, just follow her through streets and squares and smells from cafes and you'll get to see a city you've never heard of in the news.

Assaf is a young, clumsy boy who follows Dinka; Dinka follows Tamar; Tamar has given up her hair and identity to save her brother Shai, heroin-addict and guitar genius, whom she follows into the depths of hell.
Assaf and Tamar face life without much thinking, as lonely shy brave as teenagers are: life's emergencies turn them into spies, hunters, healers.
The story is well-built and has rhythm, but the most surprising tract is the way Grossman portrays the thoughts and ways of his young charachters.

This delicate, beautiful story reminded me of François Truffaut's words:"what moves me more about adolescents is, that whatever they do they do it for the first time."

The teacher from Vigevano (Lucio Mastronardi)

Vigevano is a small town in northern Italy; after ww2 it's quickly turning from timid rural village with enchanted reinassance atmosphere into rich industrial centre devoted to shoe-making.
These are the years of the so-called "boom": northern Italy is gradually becoming an important industrial zone, leaving all old rural habits.

Mr Mombelli works as a teacher in the state school, which here stays for a symbol of the uselessness of culture; he tries to cope with the big change, but small industrials grow richer and richer while Mombelli's wife dreams of a decent life that her husband's pay can't grant her. She first starts to work in a factory then convinces him to give up his job and invest his little money in a shoe businness of their own.
Richness comes. And quickly goes, taking away everything with it: family, job, meaning of life.

It may look like any common "rise and fall" story, but this one is actually a faithful mirror of what Italy was sixty years ago (a husband feeling ashamed of his woman having to go to work), and in many ways still is (those small town habits that make turists happy but hide a schyzophrenic way of life).

The novel was made into a movie in 1963. Famous Italian shoes are now mainly made in China btw.

Where I'm calling from: selected stories (Raymond Carver)

Setting: central America as we see it in the movies. Outskirts of. Kind of twilight zone somewhere in a collective subconscious.
Charachters: desperate for something, but quiet and cruel and disturbingly common. Mostly alcoholic. Go fishing a lot.

Photographic style: hands and faces are hopelessly captured forever.
Propositions are short, dry and sometimes make up for the lack of information - the author is there to take a snapshot of a single moment of beautiful desperation. Not to tell a story.

"I could feel my heart beating. I could feel everyone's heart beating. I could hear the human noise we all made, sitting there without moving, not even when the room grew dark."

Midnight's children (Salman Rushdie)

The story of Saleem Sinai - the whole Sinai family in fact - throughout the history of India.
Saleem is born on the stroke of midnight, on the very night of independence from Britain: this blesses him with the gift of telepathy and allows him to create a special relationship will all such children around the country.
Although he is sure to be meant for greater things, he immediately starts his own decline down a path of disgregation and loss, exactely as India falls from the grace of brighter days.

You only get to know Saleem around page 200, yet the first parts of the book are intersting and lively with "Bombay-talkie" style - Boolywood language, colours, images.
It is towards the end of the book that the story slows down and gets tangled up; repetitions miss their aim, become slightly boring as you wait for something to happen.

For some reasons I thought magic realism was an exclusive of South America, but here it is: Rushdie's style is learned, verbous, rich in images details and "visions and revisions which a minute will reverse".
Rushdie writes from that part of Britishness that flowered from the 50es onwards, when the children of immigrants started telling about a hybrid England - denied until then - with words and imagery borrowed from other cultures.