The World That We Knew by Alice Hoffman

Published by Simon & Schuster on September 24, 2019

This is only the second Alice Hoffman novel that I have read and I now realize that I am not her target audience. I am sure that audience will appreciate The World that We Knew more than I did. The novel is grounded in the superstition of religion, set in a world that humans share with unseen angels, where to speak the secret names of God causes lips to burn. Stories that depend on religious mythology might be more meaningful to readers who embrace religion than to readers who view mythology in fiction as a subset of fantasy. With few exceptions, I prefer the kind of fantasy that builds a separate world, one that stands apart from reality. The World that We Knew is an uncomfortable mix of the real and the supernatural. I suppose the book might be seen as magical realism, blending reality and fantasy to invite the reader to find beauty in the midst of ugliness, but if the beauty isn’t real, the invitation only emphasizes the ugly horror of reality.

In 1941, after killing a German soldier to save her daughter Lea from rape, Hanni Kohn decides to send Lea away from the growing threat to Berlin’s Jewish population. An elderly neighbor advises Hanni to visit a rabbi and ask him to make a golem to protect her daughter. The rabbi’s wife will not allow Hanni to speak to the rabbi, but the rabbi’s daughter knows the secret to golem creation and is willing to be bribed.

The golem is fashioned as a woman and given the name Ana. She is grateful to her maker for the chance to be in the world, but her devotion is to Lea. Tradition requires a golem to be destroyed before it becomes too powerful, but Ana loves being alive and at a later point in the story, contemplates running away. The prevailing belief is that Ana has no soul since she was not made by God. Killing a self-aware being who is otherwise indistinguishable from a human is not supposed to be morally troubling, at least to people who believe that the soul has an independent, God-made existence. I give credit to Hoffman for exploring that question (as science fiction writers have long done, and in greater depth), asking whether every living thing might have a soul. A character who considers dogs and doves simplistically concludes that “if you could love someone, you possessed a soul.” I would have been happy to see the philosophical golem behave selfishly by yielding to her instinct for self-preservation (selfishness, Hoffman tells us, is the first human trait a golem acquires), but like every other character in the novel, the golem’s actions are predictable.

Ana and Lea depart on a train, watching other Jewish women meet the Angel of Death as they try to escape from Germany. The story branches out at that point to follow both Lea, who is sheltered by various people in France in between hair-raising escapes, and the rabbi’s daughter Ettie, who abandons Orthodox teachings and adopts a new persona in a French village with the laudable but improbable goal of joining the Resistance and exacting revenge against the Nazis.

Lea and Ana crash the home of Lea’s distant cousin just as their maid, Marianne Félix, abandons the family in the belief that they do not “understand their slow disenfranchisement and the erosion of their rights.” Marianne returns to her family in the countryside near Lyon and eventually helps the Resistance. Hers is another branch of the story, joined with the story of a resistance fighter named Victor. A final branch is a love story involving Ana and Victor’s brother Julien, who find an unlikely way to tell each other to stay alive even after they are separated.

Holocaust stories are important, but they have often been told. Except for the addition of a golem and other elements of magic, and apart from Hoffman’s graceful prose, this one does little to distinguish itself from similar stories. In fact, the Holocaust is largely relegated to the background.  I understand that writers rely on the supernatural to illuminate the natural world (even when the world becomes as unnatural as it did during the Second World War), but I can’t say that I am a fan of that device here. The golem, the glowing angels that occasionally surround her, and the birds that do her bidding transform a story of gritty realism into a tale that might be found in a comic book.

The relationship between Lea and her mother-surrogate golem struck me as hokey, although other readers might find it touching. The two love stories, one tragic and the other not, are predictable. Ettie’s storyline is both predictable and too improbable to accept, even in a story that includes a golem who speaks birdsong. The novel’s final chapters rely on a string of coincidences to bring characters together. In the end, the novel isn’t even true to the mythology upon which it builds. Hoffman changes the nature of the golem to make a point about what it means to be human, but I don’t know that it makes sense to both accept and reject a myth.

The Angel of Death, the golem, the ability to foretell the future, chatting with birds, fortuitous coincidences, all in jarring contrast with the harsh reality of the Holocaust, didn’t juxtapose well for me. Layer that with trite pop song pronouncements about the power of love, and it was all just too much. Hoffman’s prose is beautiful, to be sure, and the story will certainly appeal to fans of romance fiction who have the ability to suspend their disbelief that a magical world could coexist with the greatest evil of the twentieth century, but I’m not that reader. I therefore recommend the novel only to fans of romance fiction and magic, and only then because of the strength of the prose.

RECOMMENDED WITH RESERVATIONS

The Nine Cloud Dream by Kim Man-Jung

Translation by Heinz Insu Fenkl published by Penguin Classics on February 12, 2019

The Nine Cloud Dream is a 17th century Korean novel set in China during the Tang Dynasty. The translation is new and lively. The story, about a young man who is seemingly reincarnated into a long and prosperous life, draws upon Buddhist faith to teach the protagonist a valuable lesson. The young man lives a full life as the story unfolds (or so it seems), and only at the end does he achieve a spiritual awakening. Along the way he encounters ghosts, fairies, fortune tellers, and all varieties of mystics. Offhand references to specific figures from Chinese history or stories from Chinese folklore are footnoted, so scholarly readers can consult the footnotes to learn more about the background that informs the story.

Modern readers might also note that the women in the story exist solely to serve men and are expected to be faithful, while men are free (and successful men are apparently encouraged) to sleep with as many women as they can. “Though I am lowborn and uneducated, I have always longed to serve a great man” one woman confesses after concealing her identity so she could “serve” the protagonist in bed. Becoming a concubine is a path of upward mobility, the Chinese version of “Here’s your one chance, Fancy, don’t let me down.” But if things do not work out as planned, women pray to Buddha that in the next life they will be reborn as a man.

Master Liu-Kuan sends a young monk named Hisng-chen to pay the Master’s respects to the Dragon King in his Underwater Palace. Hisng-chen has a nice time, drinking forbidden wine to avoid offending his host. He encounters eight fairies on his way home. Back at the monastery, his meditation is interrupted by thoughts of the property and women he has sacrificed to seek enlightenment. Later, the Master banishes Hisng-chen to the Underworld for his sins of drinking alcohol, flirting with fairies, having carnal thoughts, and yearning for a life of pleasure.

The King of the Underworld knows that each man follows his own path to perfection and that each is reborn to “work out his karma.” That “cycle of samsara” is inevitable; Hisng-chen cannot escape it. He is reincarnated as a baby named Shao-yu and must start the cycle again. In the months that follow his rebirth, he forgets his prior life.

The bulk of the story follows Shao-yu as he moves from a simple but impoverished life to a position of great importance in the service of the Emperor. Shao-Yu dresses as a woman to get a glimpse of a girl he desires and must face the wrath of a woman deceived as she plots a trick of her own. The girl, of course, is the Emperor’s daughter. Shao-yu has a much-admired flair for poetry, as do many of the women he desires. His blend of skill and humility brings him to the attention of the Emperor and the Emperor’s mother. He becomes a diplomat in the service of the Emperor and visits the rebellious governor of a distant province. Eventually he fights a war with Tibet, although he falls under the spell of a Tibetan woman (or spirit) who beds him. Then he beds an old love, then beds two women at the same time, before deciding to take them home and make a permanent arrangement with the women and his fiancé. But the Emperor wants Shao-Yu to wed his beautiful daughter, a request that is complicated by his engagement. Before that conflict can be resolved, he rides off to fight a battle and sleeps with a Dragon Princess who also decides to marry him. As I was reading these chapters, my only thought was, “Man, I want to be this guy.”

By the time the story ends, Shao has two wives and a gaggle of concubines. As an aging man, he decides the time has come to retire to a rural home with a mountain view. It is only then that he realizes that all he has achieved has been meaningless because it has not brought enlightenment. The reader at that point learns the true nature of his life, although the title kind of gives it away.

The story will certainly appeal to readers with an interest in Buddhism or Chinese history. But there’s something here for fans of fantasy, adventure, and coming-of-age stories. The protagonist’s sex life alone would have been enough to hold my interest. It is easy to understand why The Nine Cloud Dream has endured as a classic of Korean literature.

RECOMMENDED

Girl Most Likely by Max Allan Collins

Published by Thomas & Mercer on April 1, 2019

The villain of Girl Most Likely is you, given that part of the novel is written in the second person. That almost never works and this novel is no exception. In this case, the “you” is a murderer, which didn’t seem convincing to me because I know for a fact that I have never murdered anyone.

You meet Sue and ask her not to talk about what happened in the past. She won’t commit to silence, so you stab her to death. That was probably your plan regardless of her answer. But who are you? If you care, you need to read to the end to discover your identity.

The story adopts the third person when it introduces the protagonist, Galena Chief of Police Krista Larson, the youngest female police chief in the country. Her father was a celebrated cop, she broke up with her reporter boyfriend, etc. Krista is a bundle of stereotypes. A high school reunion (Krista’s class) is coming to Galena, minus a woman named Sue, who was murdered in Florida.

After meandering through the first third of the novel, the plot focuses on a female reporter who was once the victim of sexual abuse. The reporter is apparently working on a story about sexual misconduct. She is reunited at the reunion with a man who abused her (the unidentified “you” of the chapters written in second person). The encounter leads to a crime that Krista is called upon to investigate, one that echoes the Florida murder of another classmate.

Krista and her dad solve the mystery, not by piecing together clues in an interesting way but by badgering people who attended the reunion until one of them says something that makes the killer’s identity reasonably clear. That’s an accurate reflection of police work but it isn’t very interesting. And that pretty much sums up my reaction to Girl Most Likely.

I generally like Max Allen Collins’ books — I particularly enjoy what he’s done as a successor to Mickey Spillane — but Girl Most Likely is uncharacteristically dull. Perhaps that’s because it is set in Galena, a city that fails to inspire excitement. Collins tries to work in a couple of action scenes, but they are predictable and do nothing to supply the novel with the energy it lacks.

The relationship between Krista and her father is typical of cop-father, cop-daughter thriller relationships. Neither character has enough pizazz to make me care about them. But they constantly make clear that they love and admire each other, and that is apparently meant to warm a reader’s heart. I prefer meaningful characterization to fuzzy heartedness.

Collins is a capable writer and there are readers who like dull mysteries with sweet protagonists. I’m not in that audience. Girl Most Likely isn’t bad enough to condemn, but I have serious reservations about recommending it to fans of Collins’ better novels or, for that matter, to most crime novel readers.

RECOMMENDED WITH RESERVATIONS

Night Boat to Tangier by Kevin Barry

First published in Great Britain in 2019; published by Doubleday on September 17, 2019

Night Boat to Tangier is a story of transitions, bonds broken and restored, losses and recovery. The focus is on two older men and a young woman, although flashbacks also reveal the life of a woman who was with one of the men for twenty years before deciding she had to become a different person.

Maurice Hearne and Charlie Redmond are in the Algeciras terminal, distributing pictures of Dilly, a pretty girl of 23 who, according to a reluctant source, might be on her way to Tangier. Dilly was raised as Maurice’s daughter and perhaps she is. The two aging Irishmen have not seen her in three years. They roughly question young tourists who look like they might know her, tourists with dreadlocks and dogs, the kind of people (according to a roughly questioned source) with whom she has been traveling.

Maurice and Charlie began to do business in Spain in 1994, the business involving a woman named Karima and some Moroccan hash bound for Cork. Maurice was warned away from the deal by the Brit who explained it to him, but the temptation of riches overcame good judgment. Maurice and Charlie rose above their station too quickly, leading them to hide from time to time. Maurice and his wife had Dilly, made bad investments, assuaged their fear with heroin.

The long friendship of these two men has not been untroubled. The best chapter in the book details a fierce quarrel between the two as seen from the perspective of a bartender in a seedy pub in Cork. Underlying the animosity is Cynthia, Dilly’s mother.

One chapter recounts a conversation between Dilly and Cynthia that changes the course of Dilly’s life, undoubtedly for the better. Another chapter focuses on Dilly in the present, who has changed so much that even if Maurice and Charlie spot her in Algeciras, they might not know her, or they might realize that she is better off without them.

Kevin Barry’s beguiling prose reveals the contradictory natures of Maurice and Charlie, setting them in the piratical history of the Barbary coast while keeping their roots in mythical Ireland: “Its smiling fiends. Its speaking rocks. Its haunted fields. Its sea memory. Its wildness and strife. Its haunt of melancholy. The way that it closes in.”

Maurice and Charlie are philosophers of crime who expound with equal ease upon the sweetness of life at its best and the darkness of people at their worst. As they reflect on their lives, Charlies says: “We all have our regrets, Maurice. As older gentlemen.” Both men have much to regret. Life goes by so quickly and so much of it is wasted. Yet life gives us memories we will never regret, and those are the memories that sustain the men as the years advance.

Perhaps the Irish are born with a lyrical prose gene that is unique to their nation. If only for the charm of its language, Night Boat to Tangier is a gift to readers. Its insightful exploration of difficult lives is a bonus.

RECOMMENDED

White Hot Silence by Henry Porter

First published in Great Britain in 2019; published by Grove Atlantic/Mysterious Press on September 3, 2019

White Hot Silence is a sequel to Firefly. It might also be the second novel in a series (I hope so), but it is a true sequel in the sense that a reader should read Firefly to have a full understanding of the situation in which the characters find themselves.

Denis Hisami is concerned that TangKi, a company in which he has invested, may be engaged in money laundering. Its CEO, Adam Crane, has disappeared. As Hisami is raising his concerns with other investors, his wife Anastasia is kidnapped in Italy.

The agency that employs Paul Samson had been hired to investigate Crane, who appears to have rented a penthouse under the name Ray Shepherd. In the novel’s early pages, a body identified as Shepherd’s is found on the penthouse balcony, its face obliterated by large bullets. Whenever a face is missing, the reader will suspect that the body might have been misidentified.

Samson, Anastasia, and Hisami all met in Firefly. Samson fell in love with Anastasia before the novel’s end (rescuing a damsel in distress has that effect on fictional heroes). Now Anastasia is married to Hisami, who wants Samson to rescue Anastasia — again. The starting point in that endeavor is to understand why she was kidnapped. Samson works with (or against) the CIA and various other intelligence and law enforcement agencies, as well as some criminal organizations, as he searches for answers.

The premise is that American money is being used to influence European politics (a reverse of the traditional use of Russian money to influence American politics). The story’s political background is informed by Henry Porter’s experience editing and reporting news and opinion stories regarding European politics. The plot has an aura of authenticity that is too often missing from international thrillers.

The scheme that underlies the kidnapping involves the timely issue of European nationalism. The mysteries that Samson and his associates must unravel are complex but never confusing.

Porter mixes action scenes into a fast-moving plot. Some of the best scenes involve Anastasia, who proves to be a capable captive as she confounds her captors on a freighter bound for Russia and again in a Russian forest. Samson has his own share of the action, but no character is portrayed as a superhero, in the manner of too many “tough guy” action thrillers.

While the action is fun, some of the novel’s best scenes occur during Anastasia’s captivity, as she debates Russian and American literature (including the meaning of Huckleberry Finn) with her captor. I also enjoyed the return of Naji, who was a focal point in the first novel as a young teen. He enriches this story as a young adult by mixing political idealism with pragmatic strategy.

I thought Firefly was one of the best thrillers I read in 2018. White Hot Silence is nearly as good, placing it near the top of my 2019 list of favorites.

RECOMMENDED