Ms. Hen reviews Travelers

Travelers

Ruth Prawer Jhabvala

Counterpoint

1973

Ms. Hen picked up this book at a Little Free Library in Melrose, Massachusetts. She chose it because she had read other novels by this author. She couldn’t remember them in detail, so she poked through her blog and found the reviews she had written for them. She wrote that the other books tended to drag in places. When she read the past reviews, those novels came back to her.

Ms. Hen thinks that TRAVELERS is more to her taste than the others that she has read by Prawer Jhabvala. She thinks that it is paced better and is not as boring as the other two. She didn’t know why she picked up the book if she didn’t love the other two, but sometimes she can’t remember everything she reads. She tends to recall things that are visceral and strange, and the other two novels are not like that for the most part.

TRAVELERS is about four people who are traveling through India: Lee, Raymond, Asha, and Gopi. Lee is a young American woman. Raymond is a British man older than Lee. Asha is an older Indian woman. Gopi is a young Indian man. Different short chapters are told from each character’s perspective. Lee likes to travel around and not have an agenda; Raymond has an apartment that he furnishes with beautiful Indian handicrafts, Asha tries to recover from her husband’s loss with sensual living, and Gopi is a young man who attaches himself to Raymond, not knowing Raymond’s true feelings.

The characters move around each other and they try to discover what they want from India and also life. Raymond likes Gopi, then Gopi likes Lee, and after that Asha and Gopi have an affair, and then Lee situates herself in the midst of a cult and gets too involved with a cult leader.

The aspect of this novel that Ms. Hen enjoyed that did not come through in the other novels was the wry humor. Ms. Hen thought this novel was funny in the beginning; she thought the characters were ridiculous in their fascinations and obsessions. But the novel becomes violent, and after that depressing, and though Ms. Hen did laugh quietly in the beginning, toward the end, she felt sorry for the characters. She didn’t quite cry, but she felt pathos for them. This novel took her through the spectrum of feelings, and that rarely can happen while reading a book. Not for Ms. Hen anyway, and she imagines it does not happen for everyone often.

The characters talk about what India can do to people, and how it can change them. Ms. Hen understands that, because even though she has never been to India she knows how a place or an experience can help a person see the world in a different way.

A lot of this novel is about journeys that travelers can take, spiritual journeys, or journeys though love or pain. Prawer Jhabhala writes about gurus a lot and how phony ones can be detrimental. Ms. Hen liked this novel, because it took her through the gauntlet of emotions, and she enjoyed reading about the characters and how problematic their lives are, like everyone’s, because nobody is perfect, and nothing in this world ever will be.

Ms. Hen reviews Frog Music

Frog Music

Emma Donoghue

Back Bay Books

2014

Ms. Hen picked this book up at the Little Free Library in Harvard Square in front of the Science Center. She wandered to Cambridge one day, and she did not know why, but she found this book and realized that was the reason. She has read other books by Ms. Donoghue before, and she thoroughly enjoyed them.

Whenever Ms. Hen goes on a trip, she reads novels about her destination. This year, she read a crop of books about San Francisco for her vacation, but she did not love most of them. She didn’t know about FROG MUSIC then, a historical crime novel that takes place in San Francisco. The city shines through in these pages, Ms. Hen could see and smell what was happening in San Francisco while she read this book. The hills, and the immigrants, and the desperation of people with a thirst for gold and fear of smallpox come alive when she read this. Ms. Hen thinks this is a visceral novel.

FROG MUSIC is about Blanche Beunon, a French dance hall girl who becomes fast friends with a cross-dressing woman, Jenny Bonnet, when Jenny hits her with her high-wheeler bike. Jenny is a frog catcher for restaurants in San Francisco. Blanche does not usually become friends with women; she lives with her lover, Arthur, and their friend, Ernest. Jenny has just spend some time in jail for wearing men’s clothes. She goes home with Blanche who tells her about P’tit Arthur, her baby, who she believes is on a farm, but she soon discovers lives in squalid conditions in a home not too far from the House of Mirrors, the club where she dances.

At the beginning of the novel, Jenny is murdered. The storyline goes back and forth to the time right before the murder to the month before when Blanche meets Jenny. Blanche decides that Jenny turns her life upside down because she is the one who makes her think of looking for the baby, P’tit. A baby cramps Blanche’s style, she is a stripper and a prostitute, but an expensive one, and she makes a lot of money working.  She made so much that she was able to buy the building where she lives.

Arthur calls her his little bourgeois, since they met when he was a trapeze artist in the circus in France, and she joined to do the horse act. They started their affair, and they aspired to live la vie boheme, the bohemian life.

Ms. Hen thinks this book is fantastic, and a lot happens between the pages. It’s about San Francisco as a young city; it’s also about the United States as a burgeoning country; it’s about racism against Asian people in Chinatown, and it’s about love and the quest for love. It’s also about social taboos; Blanche is a prostitute who owns property, which at that time in history, might be an unthinkable venture in other parts of the world. She doesn’t care about anyone's opinion of her, she likes having a good time, but the love of her child gets the best of her. The murder of her friend terrifies her, and the world comes crashing down. Blanche is not a typical person.

This novel is based on true events. Ms. Hen thinks it’s astounding that Jenny and Blanche existed once, and the murder of Jenny remains a mystery. Ms. Hen thinks this novel is cinematic and she believes it could make a breathtaking movie. She doesn’t think this of every book she reads. There are certain parts that Ms. Hen would like to see on film, such as Blanche’s dancing. Ms. Hen recommends this novel to anyone who wants to get swept away.

Ms. Hen reviews In Country

In Country

Bobbie Ann Mason

Harper and Row

1985

Ms. Hen has read few books that she has loved so much that she had a difficult time reviewing them. This is one. She didn’t know anything about it before she read it. She picked it up at the Little Free Library in Downtown Crossing in Boston, in front of Walgreens, which does not usually have high quality books. She took this because she remembered the name of the author, since someone Ms. Hen knew mentioned her name once and it stuck in her head.

What Ms. Hen loved about this novel is that it seemed real to her. The novel takes place in the summer of 1984, and Ms. Hen remembers that year. She was several years younger than the protagonist, Sam, but the book is visceral to her. Sam just graduated from high school, and is trying to decide what she wants from life. She lives in a small town in Kentucky with her uncle who is an unemployed Vietnam vet. Her mother moved to Lexington to be with her new husband and their baby. Sam’s father died in Vietnam before she was born.

Sam is fascinated and somewhat obsessed with the Vietnam War and the father she never knew. She thinks her uncle might be suffering from Agent Orange, a poison that the American government used in Vietnam. She hangs around with the vets at McDonald’s and becomes infatuated with one of her uncle’s friends, Tom, and buys a Volkswagen bug from him. She is confused. She doesn’t want to move in with her mother in Lexington, because she doesn’t want to be around the baby and her mother’s husband, but she doesn’t want to stay in her town forever.

When Ms. Hen read this, she sympathized with Sam, because Sam doesn’t know what she wants, and is unsure of her prospects. This book reminded Ms. Hen a little of the movie GHOST WORLD, because it is about a young woman trying to find herself right after she graduates from high school. It also reminded Ms. Hen of what it was like to be young in the Eighties, and to be around older people talking about the Sixties, and how much better life was then. These days, a lot of Eighties nostalgia exists, and Ms. Hen thinks it’s peculiar how memories always seem to take a turn, and the people in charge of TV and movies always want to go back to when they were young, to the time they thought was better. That might be because society could seem to be disintegrating with the passing years, and each decade brings more problems and controversy. Ms. Hen wonders if in the future there will be nostalgia for the confusing times we are living in now.

Ms. Hen understands that when the Vietnam War was happening, it was on the news every night. These days, the war this country is having is not. Ms. Hen thinks people might not be angry enough about the war that is happening now, and it doesn’t seem real to people until a vet goes on a shooting spree and murders, similar to last week. That occurred while Ms. Hen was reading IN COUNTRY, so she had war on her mind. War screws everything up, and will continue to do so, until we decide to stop it. But nobody knows when that will happen.

A smattering of chickens lives in the pages of this book, but Ms. Hen will not recount them all. They made her happy, but the book itself moved Ms. Hen more than anything else she has read recently. It’s not often that she cries at the end of a book, but she did reading this one. She shed tears because sometimes life doesn’t make any sense, and there’s nothing we can do about it, we just have to keep going on.

Ms. Hen reviews The Stolen Child

The Stolen Child

Keith Donohue

Anchor Books

2006

Ms. Hen decided to read this because she thought it sounded like a scary Halloween novel. She read two other books the previous fall seasons by Keith Donohue, and he hasn’t disappointed her yet. His novels are about the other side of reality, and things that do not exist but in our imaginations. THE STOLEN CHILD was his first novel.

This book is about changelings, young hobgoblins or fairies that live in a forest near a town who steal children and trade places with them. A young boy, Henry Day, is stolen and a hobgoblin takes his place. Henry Day, in turn, becomes a spirit in the forest, running around with the other fairies, scavenging for food, trying to survive. The changelings christen him Aniday, because it sounds like Henry Day, and they don’t want him to remember his real name.

Henry Day, after the change, becomes a different seven-year old boy when he is found. He is good to his mother and has musical talent. The other Henry Day, the one who was stolen, did not like to help his mother with his baby twin sisters, and was selfish and didn’t like to share. The hobgoblin that takes his place wanted a better life than the one in the forest. The changelings take turns stealing children, and before the deed is done, the one who plans to make the change has all the others from his group spy on the child to learn that child's movements and personality.

When Ms. Hen read this, she felt sorry for the spirit who becomes Henry Day, and also for the changeling the boy becomes. She couldn’t figure out whose side she was on. The novel is written in alternating chapters, one from the voice of Henry Day, the fairy who became human, and the next from Aniday, the boy who became a changeling. At first Ms. Hen thought it sounded fun to live in the forest and forage for food and not live by society’s rules, but that did not last long for the fairies. Progress creeps into the forest, and soon the fairies do not have a home. This novel takes place from the late 1940s to the 1970s when expansion in the United States was growing faster.

The one thing that Ms. Hen does not like about this novel is the ending. She wanted more excitement, explosions, and razzle dazzle. She thinks the conclusion falls flat. She doesn’t think that is a reason not to read the book, but she thinks that since this was the author’s first novel, he was still learning how to write. She forgives him for this, because the other novels she has read by him have ended in dramatic and wonderful ways.

There are some chickens in this novel that Ms. Hen enjoyed. Henry and his mother decide to sell eggs to pay for his piano lessons, “Each morning, my hand went under the warm bellies of the chickens, collecting eggs, and each afternoon, my fingers upon the keyboard, perfecting my technique.” Henry and his mother eventually sell enough eggs to buy their own piano for him to practice. Before he had to practice at the school. The chickens help Henry’s dream of learning music come true. Ms. Hen thinks that chickens are useful for lots of things.

Ms. Hen thinks that this book is dark enough for the Halloween season. She read it at the end of October and the beginning of November, which are also All Saints Day and Day of the Dead. Ms. Hen thinks that sprits can be in touch this time of year, and this novel helped her imagine that there could be other sides of the world which we cannot see, hidden beneath it all.