Tag Archives: literary fiction

Ready to Escape to an African Adventure? (Shared from Article Rich)

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Photo by Gabriella Muttone

This interview appeared recently on Article Rich and covers some of the in-country experiences that inspired the fictional story of my recent novel Harry Harambee’s Kenyan Sundowner. In this story, a middle-aged white widower from Los Angeles travels to Kenya. His character arc and challenges proceed from being a tourist and passive observer to a resident who must decide how much he’s willing to commit to his new community.

Click here to read the interview.

And if you can’t travel to Kenya just now, read the book!

Book Review – An Unlikely Truth by John Rachel

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Here’s my book review of An Unlikely Truth, a novel by John Rachel.

(Not to be confused with An Inconvenient Truth by Al Gore or A Delicate Truth by John Le Carré.)

Democracy at both the local and national levels recently has been under savage assault. In this fictional story, protagonist Martin Truth’s fight was one of many such struggles to restore the meaning of representative government to a system that had been corrupted by big money and corporate power.

In this political drama, a bright, young, idealistic Green Party candidate, in his bid for the congressional seat of a conservative district in Ohio, teams with a beautiful, fiery, African-American intern to combat the slick deceptions and ruthless tactics of a sweet-talking right-wing incumbent.

This is the inspiring story of a small committed group of activists who either never knew or have forgotten the meaning of the word impossible. More importantly, it embodies hope that not all is lost, that there’s a narrative which can begin to put America back on track and render government again of the people by the people and for the people

An Unlikely Truth was published in 2014, just as the early presidential primaries got underway and well before the sensational and controversial election of 2016. Both before and after the election, there was a resurgence of grassroots political action on both the left and the right. If you’re among the people who fear that the politics of hope, are a thing of the past, you will probably regard this book as dated. If instead you describe yourself as an activist john Rachel’s vision of America may look like a glimpse of the future.

Update note: In today’s “post-truth” era, and considering all that has transpired in American politics since 2016, the question remains: Are the “politics of hope” so… yesterday?

Harry Harambee'd Kenyan Sundowner: A Novel

Harry never planned to reinvent his life at this age. He went from tourist and passive observer to reluctantly committed resident. Here is conspiracy and intrigue on the white sands of the Indian Ocean.

 

Thinking About Thinking #41 – Unlikely, Unbelievable, and Astonishing!

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Did you ever reflect on how unlikely it is that the apparent size of the Moon and the Sun are so nearly the same? From the standpoint of astrophysics, there is no reason why this coincidence should exist. There’s nothing about the size of the moon or gravitational balance between the Earth and the other two bodies that would cause the virtual sizes in the sky to match up so remarkably.

And then consider that the full solar eclipse is possibly the most significant recurring event in human cultures throughout history. Awe-inspiring. Significant, for all kinds of invented explanations.

Whether you credit creationism, intelligent design, extraterrestrial engineers, or extraordinarily unlikely random events, all you need to do is look up to get the message:

This is a very special place!

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Gerald Learns About Living Vertikal

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On this podcast episode of A Taste of Ink Live, I learn host C. Stene Duckworth‘s vision for Living Vertikal and her initiative Vertikal Alliance International (vertikalalliance.com). It’s more than just breathing in and out and putting one foot in front of the other! We talk about the challenges of making the transition from tourist to resident in East Africa, a key theme of my novel Harry Harambee’s Kenyan Sundowner. We compare and contrast politics and ethnic strife in the U.S., South Africa, and Kenya.

It’s an hour of spirited conversation. Click here to listen!

The Sociopolitical Climate of Kenya: My Interview with Rose Colombo

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Thinking About Thinking – On My Experiences Living in Kenya

I discuss wide-ranging issues about corruption, love, and loyalty with Rose Colombo, host of the Blogtalk Radio show “Colombo Chronicles.” And I explain how these themes are woven through my novel Harry Harambee’s Kenyan Sundowner.

What parallels to current events in the U.S. can we see in Kenya’s recent political history? What’s happening there now that deserves close attention? For one thing, the country is trying to rewrite its constitution at the same time candidates are declaring for the next general election in August of 2022.

What cultural issues in Kenya might be surprising to American or European tourists?

How do “unintended consequences” of aid programs and charities often cause results in-country to go awry?

Listen Now

As he transforms from passive tourist to resident, Harry must decide how much he’s willing to commit. He wonders whether he’s being played. Then he wonders, ‘Do I mind?’

Thinking About Thinking #34 – Cutting for Stone – Would you trust your barber to cut you open?

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I have to start by clearing up the confusion I had with Abraham Verghese’s title, Cutting for Stone. As the book mentions several times but never precisely explains, the reference is to the Hippocratic Oath, “I will not cut for stone.” However I had to look it up in Wikipedia to find the meaning, which is probably apparent to medical professionals. It was a prohibition from operating on stones, or calcified deposits, in the kidney or bladder. The ancient Greeks apparently thought surgeons should leave this menial procedure to barbers. The modern meaning seems to be that doctors should recognize they can’t specialize in all areas. But I’d say closer to the original intent, and perhaps more relevant to today’s medicine, would be: “I won’t perform treatments just for the sake of making money.”

Okay, I got that off my chest!

The title has at least a double meaning. The story flows from the unlikely and surprising conception of a pair of twins by an English surgeon, Thomas Stone, and an Indian-born nun, Sister Mary Praise, in Ethiopia in the mid-twentieth century. The story is narrated by one of the twins, Marion, who eventually becomes a surgeon himself.

Verghese is likewise a practicing surgeon, now living in the U.S., who grew up in Ethiopia. His account seems autobiographical, but much of it is invented, as he explains in detail in his Acknowledgments.

If I say too much about this book, I’ll have to throw in a lot of spoilers, and suspense has its delicious rewards in this leisurely paced plot. So I won’t. Suffice it to say, I believe your patience with Verghese will be rewarded.

I heard him speak at a book signing at an Ethiopian restaurant in Los Angeles, and he mentioned that he admired W. Somerset Maugham. This book does remind me of Cakes and Ale, in more ways than one, including the crafting of its sentences. (Maugham also studied medicine.) It’s not the page-turning, plain-vanilla, cliffhanger prose of Tom Clancy or Dan Brown. It’s thoughtful, colorful, and literary. Slow down and enjoy it.

This novel is about family, community, betrayal, parental love and estrangement, sibling bonding and rivalry, personal bravery, not-so-uncommon acts of kindness, the heroic practice of medicine, suffering and compassion–and irony.

Lots of irony.

Cutting for Stone is selling well, so lots of other people must think it’s worthwhile. The story doesn’t read like a movie plot, but neither does The English Patient. Yes, this book is that big–in its scope and its ambitions, and in the magnitude of its achievement.

Intrigue on the white sands of the Indian Ocean. Two book awards this year in literary fiction.

Thinking About Thinking #33 – The Girl on the Train – Does betrayal justify revenge?

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There was such a buzz about The Girl on the Train, I couldn’t help myself. Especially since, after I’d downloaded the ebook sample, that Buy Now button was burning a hole in my digital wallet.

Yes, I was engrossed. But before you rush out to the e-store, be warned.

Right off, this is a book for and about women. The two male main characters – both thirty-something husbands – are strapping hunks of man-flesh. They exude charm and flash winning smiles. And they are both abusers. Several walk-on male characters are nicer, sort of metrosexual candidates. But one has a drug habit, another is a drunk, and the third is a spineless shrink.

The wives and ex-wives are smart but vulnerable, emotional sponges thirsty for guy-sweat. They spend a lot of their emotional energy in cat-fights with each other.

Okay, here’s the gist of it. The Girl on the Train is a chilling psychological drama centered – not on a love triangle, but a pentagon – or is it a hexagon? Anyway, the permutations and combinations don’t quite include the entire neighborhood.

Main character Rachel is recently divorced from Tom, who seems like a nice guy who just couldn’t put up with her drinking habit. (She had her reasons.) He’s now married to Anna and they have a new baby. The couple live in a the same bungalow where Tom and Rachel once thought they were happy. A few doors down, Scott and Megan seem like childless lovebirds. Megan occasionally babysits for Anna.

Although it’s been a while since the breakup, Rachel can’t help spying on her old house from the commuter train she takes to work in London every day. She occasionally catches sight of Megan and Scott lounging on the porch of their cookie-cutter cottage. She doesn’t know them well, but she develops a fantasy about their perfect relationship. It’s the relationship Rachel thought she had with Tom, a love now presumably lost.

It turns out that Rachel is more than casually curious about Tom and Anna. Rachel is a stalker. She phones him at all hours, she leaves notes at the house, and she wanders the neighborhood as she stares at the front door.

One night when she’s there, neighbor Megan goes missing.

A problem is – and it’s huge – when Rachel has been drinking she’s prone to mental blackouts. There are whole chunks of time – from minutes to hours – for which she has no memory. So combined with her guilt and self-loathing over her failed marriage, Rachel begins to wonder whether she’s been bad. Maybe really, really bad?

Like, maybe, did she somehow hurt perfect-housewife Megan? And what happened to Megan, anyway? Did she run off with a lover, or will they find her body in a ditch?

That’s as far as I’ll go. No more spoilers. But I’m just priming the pump. This is a big book, and, by turns, Rachel, Anna, and Megan tell their first-person stories.

Debut novelist Paula Hawkins knows her craft. At its basis, The Girl on the Train is an ingeniously twisted  mystery. It’s a woman-jeopardy plot with multiple victims. But, be warned, there are occasional bouts of intense domestic violence.

You might wonder whether this bestseller will be a movie, and apparently it will. DreamWorks has it in pre-production with Tate Taylor (The Help) to direct. Emily Blunt has been cast in the title role of Rachel. In the book she’s described as pudgy and somewhat homely. I guess Hollywood (UK office?) thought that was a bad idea. I doubt if the svelte Ms. Blunt will be donning a fat-suit or actually putting on weight for this role. Perhaps a touch less makeup, dear? [Update: The movie has been released.]

As I say, this is a big book, and what probably won’t make it to script or screen are Rachel’s agonizing internal monologues.

But what you will see, I can predict, is every one of those wife-battering fights.

Even more titillating to movie audiences than a good wartime firefight with semiautomatic weapons is to see some sweaty guy slapping his hot babe around.

  When no one else seems to care, Evan Wycliff wants to know why his friend died. Behind the sleepy life of a farm town in Southern Missouri, century-old plots and schemes play out.   Intrigue on the white sands of the Indian Ocean. A lonely widower makes the difficult transition from passive-observer tourist to committed resident.

Thinking About Thinking #32 – A Spool of Blue Thread – Can a house be the main character?

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There’s a saying in show business: Give them a new story that’s stood the test of time. Anne Tyler, who is possibly America’s most revered living novelist, has done just that. She’s presented us with a new, fictional extended family with all their foibles and melodrama, and placed them in the setting we know well from so many of her books – in the community of Roland Park in North Baltimore and in a hand-crafted old home with varnished hardwood floors, meticulously hung pocket doors, and vaulted ceilings. The Whitshanks are a quirky, close-knit family of builders, craftsmen, and nurturers. And this house is their pride and joy. Its stately endurance through a family saga of three generations lends a sense of timelessness – but Tyler’s story is all about the passage of time and the influences our short lives have on each other.

Another time-honored Hollywood maxim: The main character grows stronger as his villain opponent becomes meaner and stronger. To her credit, Tyler not only ignores this rule, she defies it. This story has no single main character – unless it’s the house. And, as in all of her books, there are no vicious opponents. The engines of conflict whir almost entirely within the family. Adversaries that seem the most obnoxious, inconsiderate, and spiteful ultimately show us their redeeming qualities.

In every Anne Tyler novel there’s a conspicuous bad boy. In A Spool of Blue Thread, Denny shows up on the first page. And throughout the story, he’s obnoxious, inconsiderate, and spiteful. And he’s the one his saintly mom loves best, and eventually, we do, too.

Authors, your Hollywood agent or your book editor will tell you to raise the stakes to life and death. The dreary result is on-screen violence – shootouts, and fiery crashes, and bloody mayhem. But Anne Tyler quietly and bravely won’t go there. She gives us a no-fault auto accident and a sibling quarrel that ends with punch in the nose.

So how does Tyler do it? How by defying the rules does she engage us? Her narrative slows down to the pace of daily life. She gives us none of her own opinions, but a stream of meticulous detail about meals, clothes, woodwork, plants, weather, money problems, idle thoughts, and petty grievances. And in focusing the marvels of the mundane, she helps us appreciate the joys of living our own ordinary and wonder-filled lives.

  When no one else seems to care, Evan Wycliff wants to know why his friend died. Behind the sleepy life of a farm town in Southern Missouri, century-old plots and schemes play out.   Intrigue on the white sands of the Indian Ocean. A lonely widower makes the difficult transition from passive-observer tourist to committed resident.

Thinking About Thinking #31 – The Professor of Desire – Male-centered fiction – So yesterday?

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Philip Roth is best known for his classic boychik lit coming-of-age story, Portnoy’s Complaint. Remember boychik is Yiddish for a young man with more chutzpah than brains. And, all of Roth’s novels since then seem to be about self-centered males who are thinly disguised extensions of his own fragile ego.

The Professor of Desire is the first-person confession of David Kepesh, an English professor like Roth himself, who obsesses, not about finding love so much as gratifying his urges without feeling too guilty.

We meet him as overprotected young man working in his family’s business. When he wins a scholarship to attend university in London, he has his first adult relationships with a pair of Swedish girls, Elisabeth and Birgitta. Ideal as the situation might seem for a man of his age and lusts, he’s miserable. Elisabeth moves out because he’s inconsiderate. Birgitta stays and is more than willing to please, but her eagerness turns him off.

Flash forward, and David falls for gorgeous supermodel Helen, who led a shadowy past life in Southeast Asia. Ignoring the fact that she must have left her heart there, he worships her, and they marry. One day, she leaves him abruptly for Singapore to take up with her former lover. And not so much because of anything David did or didn’t do, but because she simply doesn’t care enough about him.

Now entering his forties, David takes up with Claire, a sweet shiksa from New England, a caring, sensible woman, and the relationship is too good to be true. Just when David is beginning to suspect he can’t go the distance, his widowed father shows up all excited that his son will finally make a happy marriage.

We don’t get to find out. That’s where the book ends. The Professor of Desire was published in 1977, about the time activists like Germaine Greer and Gloria Steinem were redefining feminism. They were mostly successful inspiring a new generation of young women. But Roth seems to be stumbling around, muttering to himself about what it means to be a man. He really doesn’t have a clue.

I didn’t have a chance to include this comment in my radio podcast review, but revisiting this book decades later doesn’t bring any surprises about gender roles in today’s society. But what is striking is the ageism that becomes apparent in Roth’s work. At the end of the novel, David is about forty and his father is past sixty. Roth describes the older man as doddering, forgetful, and foolish. And David’s second-worst fear, after doubting his own worthiness as a companion for Claire, is that his father will die soon. If this book were written today, the portrait of the father would not be credible unless the man were in his eighties. Even then, many mature readers whose minds are still sharp would find the caricature of the senile dad distasteful.

  When no one else seems to care, Evan Wycliff wants to know why his friend died. Behind the sleepy life of a farm town in Southern Missouri, century-old plots and schemes play out.   Intrigue on the white sands of the Indian Ocean. A lonely widower makes the difficult transition from passive-observer tourist to committed resident.

Thinking About Thinking #30 – Back to Blood – In a melting pot, what melts, exactly?

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In his novel Back to Blood, Tom Wolfe savages urban American morality, or lack thereof, by focusing on the melting pot of Miami.

In this city there are more recent immigrants than anywhere else. The races cohabit and wheel and deal, but they mix hardly at all. As one of his characters quips, Everybody hates everybody.

Wolfe’s main character here is Nestor Camacho, a roguish cop of Cuban ancestry who, like so many of his neighbors in Hialeah, barely speaks a word of Spanish. In many ways, Camacho is a hero, often in spite of himself. His good heart and fierce sense of duty carry him into dangerous situations, intrigues, and trouble with his superiors. The driving force of a subplot about a colossal art forgery is preppie newspaperman John Smith, who is also a rogue, and also prone to find all kinds of trouble, much of it newsworthy. And most of the truths he uncovers are inconvenient both for his media bosses and for the mob-style rulers of the social order.

This book shows a lot of skin, as they say. Situations are weird or gross, or both. Wolfe reveals himself to be a dirty old man with a massive vocabulary who will titillate you until you have way too much information. We are self-seeking animals, he seems to say, and most of our decisions and actions are motivated by our most basic desires.

Tom Wolfe’s literary predecessor could well be the nineteenth-century French satirist Honoré de Balzac, who was so alike in his low opinion of human nature and exploitation of its foibles. At heart, Wolfe is a curmudgeonly moralist. Society, he seems to be saying, still needs cops and journalists, who can occasionally be heroes, if they dare to break the rules.

  When no one else seems to care, Evan Wycliff wants to know why his friend died. Behind the sleepy life of a farm town in Southern Missouri, century-old plots and schemes play out.   Intrigue on the white sands of the Indian Ocean. A lonely widower makes the difficult transition from passive-observer tourist to committed resident.