Ms. Hen reviews The Underground Railroad

The Underground Railroad

Colson Whitehead

Anchor Books

2016

Ms. Hen decided to read this simply because she had heard it was good. She is always interested in reading about American slavery and the plight of African Americans, because she likes to read about tormented souls. Ms. Hen thinks that the best literature is about people with messed up lives. She likes to read about other people’s problems.

When Ms. Hen started reading this, she couldn’t get the book she had read recently, KINDRED, out of her head. KINDRED is also about slavery in the South, but it is more of a science fiction novel. Ms. Hen expected that this book would be similar to that in the way that it was magical and fanciful, but it was not as she expected. Yes, the part about the Underground Railroad actually being a railroad is fascinating, but in the beginning, she wanted more fantasy. But as she got into the book, she realized it is not like this, and she got into the story.

THE UNDERGROUND RAILROAD is about Cora, a slave in Georgia, who lives in the house on the plantation where the outcast women live. She is ostracized because her mother ran away when she was young. She has a difficult life growing up without a mother, and always wanted to know what became of her. She is chosen by one of the men, Caesar, to go with him when he escapes, because she is a lucky charm, for the obvious fact that her mother managed to get away. They run and are almost caught. They find the Underground Railroad and are whisked away on a locomotive to safety and possibly freedom.

Cora goes with Caesar to South Carolina to find a thriving former slave community there. They manage to start to have a life, but she is almost caught. Cora goes to the underground railroad and ends up in North Carolina. She travels around until she finds people to help her.

The runaway slaves have a difficult life trying to make their way in the world. Ms. Hen has read many books about this, but this one is different. This novel has a fairy tale essence to it, it seems like it is meant to be a dream. Cora suffers and struggles, but she has a will to survive. The railroad is a symbol for all the people that made it, a symbol of perseverance and determination and dreams of a better life. Ms. Hen can imagine what it’s like to run for her life, and be terrified. That’s what reading fiction helps us to do.

There are lots of chickens and hens in this book, which made Ms. Hen happy. One of the other slaves on the plantation in Georgia, Ava, wanted Cora’s small plot of land, “She cherished her chickens more than those children and coveted Cora’s land to expand her coop.” Cora has a piece of land where she grows vegetables. Ms. Hen thinks it’s strange that a woman loved chickens more than her children, but in their time, some things didn’t make sense.

Ms. Hen truly loved this book. It has an airy, lightweight, but heavy, contradictory way about it. It is a road novel, an adventure novel, and a novel about a woman who overcomes great hardship. Readers should aspire to Cora’s strength. Ms. Hen recommends this novel to anyone who wants to be inspired to carry on.

Ms. Hen reviews In Evil Hour

In Evil Hour

Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Avon Books

1968

Translated from the Spanish by Gregory Rabassa

Ms. Hen decided to read this book because she has read every other novel by Marquez, and she wanted to finish them all. This is not considered his best book, but it is his first published novel. Ms Hen didn’t like this as much as she liked the others. She thinks there may have been something wrong with the translation, because the prose is not as liquid and glorious as the other books she has read.

Even so, there are hints of the genius to come in this novel. Some elements of other novels appear, such as a telegraph office, and twisted love affairs. Ms Hen thinks that some writers have distinct styles that echo in all their works. Marquez is one of those writers whose voice carries in the scope of his writing. Another author who Ms. Hen believes follows this tradition is Haruki Murakami. All his books are fantastic, but they are similar and have recognizable traits.

Even though Ms. Hen doesn’t think this is the best Marquez novel ever, she finds it worthwhile to look back to where he started, to see the how the seed of brilliance first sprouted.

Ms. Hen reviews Unlocking the Air

Unlocking the Air

Ursula K. Le Guin

Harper Collins

1996

Ms. Hen likes science fiction, and is especially interested in women's science fiction writers right now. Even though this collection of short stories would be considered magical realism, it is what Ms. Hen enjoys. These stories are strange and wacky. These are the type that inspired Ms. Hen to want to be a writer in the first place: the idea that a story can be anything a writer wants. Ms. Hen doesn’t think writers try to write like this anymore, and if they do, the writing in uninspired. In MFA programs, the instructors try to get rid of the desire to write genre fiction like this out of the students, but Ms. Hen wants to try to go back to being a dreamer and writing things that are bizarre.

The first story in the collection is “Half Past Four,” which is an odd collection of stories in itself, about characters who have the same name and are in different situations. It took a few sections for Ms. Hen to figure out what was happening. The names of the characters, Ella, Ann, Stephen, and Theodore are in different stories and are different people in each, but they all have to do with families and relationships, and how dysfunctional people’s lives can become.

“Spoons in the Basement,” is about a woman, Georgia, who discovers coffee spoons in a closet in her house that she didn’t know were there. She doesn’t know the history of the house and who could have left them. After that, she finds a section of the house where people are living that she did not know about. This story made Ms. Hen think it’s an allegory, that there are things we don’t know about in our lives, that are underneath everything, that could either be upsetting or comforting to us. Georgia accepts that there are two nice young women living in the basement, but she doesn’t like that a middle-aged couple are living there as well. It shows that some people have innate prejudice; there shouldn’t be anyone living in a person’s house that is unknown to them, and Georgia should have been upset about all of them.

The story that haunted Ms. Hen the most was, “Olders,” which is about a woman whose husband gets hurt in a battle, and who needs to recover. The doctor comes to help him, but he is working on finding out the secret of the island. The injured man is dying and is turning into a tree. When the native people of the island die, they transform into trees. The man’s wife is not from the island, so she is not like this. Ms. Hen thinks this is a creative story, the kind that she is interested in writing. The tree people made Ms. Hen imagine what it would be like to die and become a tree. When a person is dead, nothing matters anymore, but if we become trees, we could die again, or we could get hurt if someone chopped us down. The tree people could suffer as trees, as we suffer in life.

Ms. Hen recommends this collection of short stories to anyone who is willing to go out on a limb and read a strange book, to stretch the imagination to where it is able to go, and to reach to the outer limits of our minds. Ms. Hen is a quirky hen, and she likes to be around kindred spirits who like the same things.

Ms. Hen reviews The Life of Elves

The Life of Elves

Muriel Barbery

Europa Editions

2015

Translated from the French by Alison Anderson

Ms. Hen picked up this novel because she loved another by this author, THE ELEGANCE OF THE HEDGEHOG, and she liked the title of this one. Ms. Hen found this book in a dusty bookstore, which she frequents sometimes called Commonwealth Books, which is located in an alley in downtown Boston, near the Financial District and shopping area.

Ms. Hen didn’t know what to think of this book at first. It has a very quiet and unassuming tone, and at times, she didn’t understand what was going on. This is a strange book with a strange premise, and Ms. Hen wasn’t sure if she liked it that much. She didn’t hate it, but there were times when she was reading when her mind couldn’t help but wander.

This is a novel about two girls, Maria and Clara, who live in France and Italy, respectively, who both have special powers and are enjoined to the Elven world. Maria can communicate with animals, and Clara has a gift for music. They are connected to each other in a special way.

Maria lives in the countryside in a village in France with her adopted family. Her grandmother cures people with herbs. There is a scene in the novel in which Maria moves three cloves of garlic on the hearth, and that converted the image, and that idea was repeated throughout the novel. The idea is that a simple item can be changed, and made into an artistic representation of the same thing that was there before, but morphed into something more beautiful.

Clara learns to play the piano quickly, and she could learn any piece immediately and by heart. She is taken to a place in Rome, away from her village in the mountains, in order to learn music and help discover what she is meant to do. She makes friends with the people in Rome, but does not leave the place where she lives that often. She learns about the Elven world through Petrus, who drinks and tells her stories.

There are several hens and chickens in this novel, which made Ms. Hen like it more than she would have if there weren’t. She finds that there are usually hens and chickens in French novels, because they love chickens. Ms. Hen has been to France, and she met some hens there.

Ms. Hen didn’t completely love this novel, because she couldn’t get into it enough. But she thinks it is a good book to read in the middle of summer because there is a lot of talk about snow and cold. She likes to read books about winter in the middle of a heat wave. Yesterday where Ms. Hen lives, it was 96 degrees, and it felt like 104. She doesn’t like the summer. The only good thing about summer is the fact that it’s not winter, and there is no ice on the streets, and she has more energy to read because the days are longer J

Ms. Hen makes a friend in France