Ms. Hen reviews THE STORY OF THE LOST CHILD

THE STORY OF THE LOST CHILD

Elena Ferrante

Europa Editions

2015

Ms. Hen has read all the previous books in the Neapolitan novels series, and when she read the third one, she told herself she would not wait as long to read the next one as she had to read each book, but she did. She waited longer. She’s not sure why. She might have wanted to prolong the anticipation of the pleasure of reading it, or she had too many other books to read.

Ms. Hen loved the three first books. They are the story of Elena and Lila, their friendship growing up in a small town outside of Naples, in the macho middle of the twentieth century. Throughout their lives Italy and the world changes, attitudes towards women and lifestyles transform, and the friends are swept along with the tides.

THE STORY OF THE LOST CHILD is a novel about maturity, both friends are in their thirties, and they have children. At the beginning of the novel, Elena is having an affair with her lifelong love Nino, but she doesn’t realize what a philanderer he is. Ms. Hen wanted to scream at her in the last book, not to go with him, but she knew it wouldn’t make any difference. Elena is a romantic and believes in love, even when all the signs are there that the person she loves is a terrible man.

Elena and Lila become closer in this novel than they had in the previous three novels. Elena moves back to the neighborhood, directly upstairs from Lila. They take care of each other’s children. They even get pregnant at the same time.

Ms. Hen didn’t enjoy this novel as much as the other three. She thinks it might have to do with the fact that this is the end of their lives, and there doesn’t seem to be much hope left. In the other novels, there was always the fantasy of what would happen next, but in this one, there aren’t any dreams about the future, because their lives are what they are, and they probably won’t change. It’s the dreariness of the end of life that brought Ms. Hen down; she wondered, is this what we have to look forward to? She doesn’t want to lose hope, and she’ll do her best to keep it alive in her life.

There is a lot of mystery about who Elena Ferrante truly is, since her name is a pseudonym. A lot of people in Italy have an idea of who she might be, but Ms. Hen doesn’t think it matters. If someone wants to be anonymous, then that is her right. People say they know she is a woman, but that’s all they know.

Ms. Hen had an idea that Ms. Ferrante might have written these novels to create a friend she always wished she had had. The character is a writer, and it appears that the author knows Naples and the time in which the characters lived perfectly. Ms. Hen thinks that she might have created Lila because she never had a lifelong friend who was as talented as she is herself, and she created Lila as a mirror of who she could have been if she never left her neighborhood, and was never educated. The books teem with honesty, so Ms. Hen knows that there has to be some reality to the stories and the characters.

Even though Ms. Hen didn’t enjoy this novel as much as the other three, it is still worth reading to see how Elena arrives at the end of her life and how much she and the people around her have to endure. Life doesn't have to be all suffering, it is simply what we go through, says Ms. Hen. Some people might argue, but Ms. Hen will stand her ground. Nobody can argue with a hen.

Ms. Hen reviews STONES FROM THE RIVER

STONES FROM THE RIVER

Ursula Hegi

Scribner

1994

One of Ms. Hen’s hen friends gave this book to her some time ago, but she hadn’t gotten around to reading it until now. Most of the time, Ms. Hen shies away from reading lengthy novels, because they take a lot of time to read. She’s not sure why she feels this way. It might be because she likes to be able to finish a novel fast.

Even though this was a big book, Ms. Hen couldn’t put it down. It is the story of Trudi Montag, a dwarf (or Zwerg in German) who lives in Germany and is born during World War I when her father is released from the Russian front because of an injury in his leg. When Trudi is born, her mother starts to go crazy. She despairs over the fact that she gave birth to a dwarf child. Her mother drives herself to her death.

Trudi lives with her father, and her whole life she suffers from her affliction because people treat her like a freak since there’s nobody like her in the town. She has some friends, but she loses them eventually. She works in her father’s pay-library and tells stories to everyone in the town about everyone else. She learns people’s secrets and she tells them to people and she thinks it gives her power. When she meets a dwarf woman for the first time, an animal trainer named Pia, at a carnival, Trudi becomes inspired towards self-improvement, but she gets hurt by doing this.

The town, Burgdorf, has to bear the burden of World War II, and Trudi and her father hide Jews in their house, until she is questioned for making a joke about standing up for the flag at a concert. The Jews are slowly removed from the town, and the rumors about what happens in the KZs, concentration camps, horrifies the town. People keep their mouths closed because they don’t want to get sent away, or shot, which happens to some, not just the Jews.

Trudi’s family is Catholic and they go to church regularly. This made Ms. Hen wonder about religion and Catholicism in general and how it forms characters in literature. The Catholic characters Ms. Hen has read about seem to be obsessed with piousness and sin and look for ways to absolve themselves other than saying the Rosary. Ms. Hen is not Catholic and does not believe in original sin, or other kinds of Catholic sin.

STONES FROM THE RIVER reminds Ms. Hen of another book she read recently, THE BASTARD by Violette Leduc, in which the characters were also practicing Catholics at the beginning. Both books go through World War I and II and both the characters are tormented, Leduc because she is a bastard, and Trudi because she is a dwarf. Both books also take place in Europe, THE BASTARD in France, and STONES in Germany. The two books are similar, but are different because THE BASTARD is a memoir, and STONES is a novel. Some of the things in THE BASTARD are too bizarre to have been made up, and they weren’t. Some of the events in STONES are also too strange to be fiction, and Ms. Hen wonders if some of the book is taken from real-life stories that the author knew.

Some hens appeared in this novel, which made Ms. Hen happy. Trudi’s friend Max told her the story of how he lost his job as a teacher. He was building something and his colleague asked him what it was, and he said, “’This will be a chicken coop. And that I build here is thanks to the Fuhrer.’” His colleague didn’t think Max’s statement was funny, and Max was fired for that. In wartime, it wasn’t good to joke about things, even though people used that expression all the time.

Ms. Hen knows some things are no joking matter, like dwarves and war and death. Ms. Hen enjoyed this book so much that while she was reading it she had dreams about it at night while she slept. This doesn’t happen often, but it does when a book and its characters get under Ms. Hen’s skin and she can’t get them out.

Ms. Hen reviews THIS BOY'S LIFE

THIS BOY’S LIFE

Tobias Wolfe

Harper & Row

1989

Ms. Hen decided to buy this book when she saw it at a used bookstore because someone she respected told her a long time ago that it was worth reading. Ms. Hen bought the book without flipping through the pages, but she wished she had because the pages were marked in the book, and it seemed as if a person of low intelligence had owned the book previously.

Ms. Hen did not like this book. It is a memoir of a young boy, Toby Wolfe, who comes from a broken home, lives with his mother, and is separated from his brother and father. This book is very much a man-book. It’s about a bad kid: one who lies, steals, plays with guns and gets into trouble. Ms. Hen didn’t like the character because he reminded her of her younger brothers when they were kids, bad and bratty and smelly little boys who liked to cause mischief.

Ms. Hen’s brothers weren’t as close to being as bad as the young Tobias, who preferred to be called Jack Wolfe. That is possible because Toby did not have a positive father figure in his life. His mother ran from Florida to get away from an abusive boyfriend, but then ended up marrying another horrible man in Washington State. Young Toby didn’t seem to have a chance. But that doesn’t mean Ms. Hen had to like the book.

Even though the writing in the book is very clean and descriptive and vibrant, Ms. Hen did not sympathize with the character. She couldn’t. He was a bad kid, and Ms. Hen didn’t like reading about him. One of the good things about the book is that it is a very quick read, and it was over fast.

There was a brief moment reading when Ms. Hen thought THIS BOY’S LIFE could be like ON THE ROAD, but about a young boy, but Toby never ran away. He tried, but he didn’t because he was foolish with his money. There were pieces of this book that reminded Ms. Hen of THE LIAR’S CLUB, but she doesn’t think THIS BOY’S LIFE is nearly as good or interesting as that book.

Ms. Hen would recommend this book to anyone who has every been a bratty young boy, or anyone who lived their youth in the 50s and 60s, but as a woman who did not live during this time, Ms. Hen was not inspired by THIS BOY’S LIFE. She’s glad she never lived during this era, and never had to directly deal with a young child with the proclivities of this boy.

Ms. Hen reviews IN SEARCH OF LOVE AND BEAUTY

IN SEARCH OF LOVE AND BEAUTY

Ruth Prawer Jabvala

Penguin Books

1983

Ms. Hen bought this novel at a used bookstore because she had read another book by the author, HEAT AND DUST, and she enjoyed it. Incidentally, HEAT AND DUST was the first book reviewed on her blog, so she felt connected to the author.

IN SEARCH OF LOVE AND BEAUTY suffers from the same problem that HEAT AND DUST does: it trails along at a snail’s pace. The novel is slow, and Ms. Hen could understand why some people might not like it, another reason for that is the characters all seem to dislike each other.

The novel is about a family, the matriarch, Louise, her daughter, Marietta, and Marietta’s children Mark and Natasha, and their relationship with a type of guru, Leo Kellermann. Leo has a cult, and in his youth Louise and her friend Regi assist Leo with his classes and his teaching, but they break with him, but he still pesters them for money and companionship.

Leo has affairs with Louise and Regi and a number of other women. Leo is a phony, but he is charismatic and people seem to believe he has something worthwhile to say. He prophesies that people should reach “The Point” in their lives, when they realize their potential.

Ms. Hen doesn’t like reading novels about people who are rotten to each other, but she couldn’t stop reading this, because this novel was so visceral that she felt she was there with the characters in New York in places like a café called the Old Vienna drinking liqueur drinks with whipped cream and looking at the gilded chandeliers and blue velvet chairs. There were a few places in the novel in which cake and pastries are mentioned, and for some reason, they stood out for Ms. Hen, especially a scene at Louise’s birthday party where the grandchildren are shoving pastry after pastry into their mouths.

Marietta travels to India to be with her lover, Ravi, and she spends time getting to know the country. She stays at a house with a famous singer and they go out to eat at a restaurant, “Everyone was enjoying their meal, the ladies as much as the men, tearing the legs of skinny ovenbaked chickens and bringing their heads forward to bite into them.” Right after this Marietta gets bit by a bird and is scared that she might be infected. Ms. Hen appreciated that the people were eating chicken in India, and it is a pivotal point because it shows what kind of person Marietta is: a person trying to be worldly, but neurotic about unpleasant things.

Ms. Hen thought that this novel was good, but it might not be for everyone. People who aren't bothered by reading about characters who don’t like each other, who are selfish, and who are strange, and lie to other people about their mental health would enjoy IN SEARCH OF LOVE AND BEAUTY. Ms. Hen didn’t mind because she knows this is the way people can be. If she met these characters in real life, she wouldn’t like them, but reading about them didn’t bother her. She doesn’t mind neurotics if they’re not right in her face. It’s good to live in other people’s problems for a short time.

Ms. Hen reviews THE HOMESMAN

THE HOMESMAN

Directed by Tommy Lee Jones

2014

Ms. Hen does not usually like Westerns, and she doesn’t like Hillary Swank either, but she saw the preview for HOMESMAN, and she was intrigued. She became interested in the story of the three women in the Nebraska Territory who went mad after a long, painful winter.

Hillary Swank’s character, the pious, unmarried and outspoken Mary Bee Cuddy is recruited to escort the women to Iowa to meet with the wife of a minister who takes care of people with mental illnesses.

The film opens with Cuddy making dinner for her neighbor; Ms. Hen was pleased the pioneer was making fried chicken. Cuddy asks her neighbor to marry her because she thinks they would make a good match with their farms, because she has land and knows how to manage money, but he turns her down flat because he says she is too plain, and he tells her he plans to go back East to find a wife.

As Ms. Hen said before, she doesn’t like Hillary Swank, but she is perfect for this part. She is headstrong and capable of taking charge of her life and situation. She blackmails George Briggs (Tommy Lee Jones) into taking the three insane women to Iowa because she feels like she needs a man’s protection on the journey. She cuts him down from the rope from which he was hanging that some men did to him after they caught him jumping a claim, taking someone else’s house while he was away. She tells him she’ll cut him down, but she has a job for him. She doesn’t tell him what it is until he’s down.

Ms. Hen thought this was a women’s film. Great performances are given by Swank, and the three women she escorts, Grace Gummer as Arabella Sours, Miranda Otto as Grace Belknap and Sonja Ritcher as Gro Svendson. Meryl Streep appears at the end as the minister’s wife in Iowa. Ms. Hen thinks this is an important film, because the mentally ill are not usually portrayed in such films as Westerns. But this isn’t a typical Western.

Ms. Hen thought this film wasn’t like a Western because most seem to be phony, completely unlike what the real Wild West was like. Ms. Hen doesn’t know what the real West was like, but she knows it wasn’t like BONANZA. This film seemed like it was similar to what the authentic West: dangerous, but beautiful, and full of daring people ready to start a new life in a new place. There were dangers such as Indians, stray settlers, and hostile hoteliers. The rules were different in the Wild West than they are today, where the law of the land didn’t exist, and nobody cared what could be enforced, they were out for themselves to survive and get by day to day.

This film is tragic and sad, but not in an unexpected way. Women were supposed to want to be like women and Mary Bee Cuddy doesn’t think she could get married and be like other women. George Biggs redeems himself and brings music to Mary who loved music and dreamed of a piano before she went on the journey with the women.

Ms. Hen loved this film because it was different, not like most Hollywood films. She discovered that it was a French and American production, and she decided that is why she enjoyed it, since it was French. The quiet power of this film lurks beneath the surface, a story of duty, longing and sacrifice. Ms Hen recommends this film, but be prepared for a reflection of reality.

Ms. Hen reviews THE BASTARD

THE BASTARD

Violette Leduc

Dalkey Editions

2003 Original publication 1964

Translated by Derek Coltman

Ms. Hen decided to read this novel because she saw the film VIOLETTE, and was intrigued by the story of Violette Leduc and her tumultuous life. Ms. Hen read a collection of short stories by Simone De Beauviour recently for the same reason.

THE BASTARD is about Violette Leduc and her experience growing up as a bastard, an illegitimate child of a servant and the master’s son. Leduc was born in 1907. Her mother is marked because she had a child out of wedlock. She takes her child to live with her mother, and the grandmother dotes on the child and spoils her until she dies. Leduc said that her grandmother’s death frees her, since she could not hide in her apron ever again.

Ms. Hen was enthralled by THE BASTARD.  It’s not because there are dozens of chickens and hens scattered all throughout the pages. It’s because the writing has a dense beauty to it; the writing is heavy with words, and the descriptions of things are so unique and desperate that Ms. Hen has never read anything quite like it recently.

When she meets her stepfather, Violettte greets him, and he brushes her aside, and she writes, “I turned to ice for thirty years.” Her mother works hard when she marries the stepfather; she wanted to prove to him that she could be a good wife. Violette is sent to boarding school.

Ms. Hen thought THE BASTARD might be considered to be like Proust, but with some well written lesbian love scenes. She wrote, “A caress is to a shudder what twilight is to a lightening flash.” Violette has a love affair with her schoolmate Isabelle, and after that a teacher at the school, Hermine. A student reports them and Violette is expelled, and Hermine fired.

Violette has affairs with men as well. She has a long relationship with Hermine, until one day Hermine leaves. Violette had worked at a publishing company, but she quit, so she could stay at home. After Hermine leaves Violette gets a job as a secretary and meets Gabriel, her old friend again, and eventually marries him.

Throughout the book, Violette likes to pick flowers. She picks them illegally, from parks, and houses, and she picks them in the forests and the fields. Ms. Hen thinks this is because Violette is looking for her own flower, and since her name is Violette.

Violette leaves Paris during World War II with Maurice Sachs to go to the Normandy. This is when he encourages her to write, and she starts. He gives her an exercise book and tells her to sit under an apple tree. She becomes successful in the black market trade. She mails food from the country where it is plentiful to Paris where people are hungry. This amazed Ms. Hen. She didn’t think people could send food in the mail without it spoiling, But there are ways for everything when people are hungry, for food and money.

Ms. Hen was dazzled by THE BASTARD. The book is a dense read, Ms. Hen found that it took her a long time to finish it, since she had to take breaks and come up for air every now and then. It isn’t often that a novel gets under Ms. Hen’s skin and infects her, but this one did. She highly recommends this novel, but to the reader, be prepared to experience Violette Leduc’s heartbreak firsthand. THE BASTARD is not for the weak.

Ms. Hen reviews THIS IS NOT YOUR CITY

THIS IS NOT YOUR CITY: STORIES

Caitlin Horrocks

Sarabande Books

2011

Ms. Hen stumbled upon this book by accident. She had no idea what this slim volume would be like, but the book ended up dazzling her. She does not want to say that she is stalking the author, so she will not say such a thing. Ms. Hen is a hen of discretion, and will not answer any incriminating questions.

This collection is composed completely of stories about women. Ms. Hen realized as she read the book that the ages of the characters get progressively older as the book goes on. The first story, “Zolaria,” is about a ten-year old girl, and the last story, “In the Gulf of Aden, Past the Gulf of Guadarfi,” is about a woman about fifty years old.

The stories in this book are strange, but some of them are strange in an ordinary way, such as “Steal Small,” about a couple who looks for dogs to sell to make a little extra money. In the story, Lyssa and Leo live together with a dog kennel in the back of the house. Lyssa works at the Goodwill and Leo works at a slaughterhouse killing cows all day. Ms. Hen didn’t like their world, but she understands that people can live like this. Leo finds dogs to sell to a friend, who in turn sells them to laboratories for experiments. Lyssa pities a beautiful Dalmation and almost sets the dog free. This story is visceral in a way that brought Ms. Hen into their lives. Some people do things that others could not imagine doing, but they do those things because they don’t know how to survive any other way.

The story “Embodied,” is about someone who seems completely normal, but is not because she believes she has lived 127 lives. She sees people all over the town where she lives that she used to know in her past lives. Ms. Hen loved this story. She doesn’t believe in past lives, but it’s fun to imagine we could have been someone else in a different life. She’s not sure if the character is crazy, or if she truly has had all those lives, but for the purpose of the story, the reader has to believe that the character is telling the truth. The lengths to which the woman goes to fulfill her duty to her former selves shocked Ms. Hen, and she knew the character is serious about her former lives, and probably isn’t crazy.

Ms. Hen likes to assume that everyone is crazy sometimes, or they have been crazy, or will go crazy, but sometimes that is not true.

The characters in this collection all seem to be sane to Ms. Hen. In the title story, “This is Not Your City,” Daria, a Russian woman, deals with the disappearance of her daughter. She lives in Finland, and her Finnish is minimal. She is a tortured Russian soul; she offered herself on a dating website to find a Finnish husband, and brought her teenage daughter, Nika, with her when she got married. The daughter does not do as well at school as she did in Russia, mostly because of her language skills. This is a story about a woman who survives; she wants to help her daughter flourish in the world. She teaches her daughter that sometimes the honest way isn’t always the best road to travel.

Ms. Hen loved this book. The stories are short, but engrossing, and Ms. Hen found from these stories that even what seems like an ordinary life can be extraordinary in its own way. Ms. Hen realized from reading THIS IS NOT YOUR CITY that some people have astounding survival skills, and Ms. Hen would like to think that she would be up to the challenge if the time comes. This book took Ms. Hen’s breath away.