This Country Is No Longer Yours by Avik Jain Chatlani

Published by Penguin Random House Canada/Bond Street Books on May 7, 2024

This Country Is No Longer Yours tells the story of Peru from roughly 1980 to the beginning of the twenty-first century. The story is told from different perspectives in five sections, sometimes in the first person, sometimes in the third.

The focus is on a civil war (or, depending on how you look at it, a fight between the government and terrorists) during the 1980s and 90s. The brief initial section is narrated by a Peruvian student who, at the behest of a professor, is in Cambodia during the late 1970s to study Pol Pot’s version of Maoism. He is tasked with watching “the end of the world” — or, at least, the end of more than a million lives at the hands of the Khmer Rouge, whose members have evacuated cities and towns, forcing residents to work collectively in fields, “liberating” them from capitalist excess while murdering university students, teachers, lawyers, doctors, members of the media, landlords, and Pol Pot’s critics. The student is uncertain that Pol Pot’s methods can be implemented effectively in Peru.

The professor is Abimael Guzman. He wants to lead his own Maoist revolution in Peru. To that end, he founds the Shining Path (Sendero Luminoso). The Shining Path wages a guerrilla war with the aim of liberating ordinary people from the influence of intellectuals, politicians, property owners, and anyone else who doesn’t follow Guzman’s brand of communism. Terrorizing the population with brazen robberies and killings, the Sendero kill and gut stray dogs before stringing them up on lampposts, symbolizing the fate of the “dogs who betray Mao.”

Within a few years, Sendero terrorists have chased Indians from the countryside into Lima, where they live in poverty. Most people with resources have secured visas and fled the country.

Part two is narrated by a government security officer who works under an advisor to President Garcia known as the Doctor. The officer is later recruited to work for Garcia’s successor, Alberto Fujimori (El Chino). The officer fights against the terrorists by adopting their tactics. He kills Sandero members who try to rob the passengers on a bus but raids aid organizations (purportedly to search for Sandero sympathizers) and steals their cash. He enlists surgeons to harvest organs from the dead. He matches the symbolism of hanging dogs on lampposts by hanging the corpses of terrorists from trees. As the two sides wage war, electricity regularly fails, streets are increasingly empty, food is in short supply, and all the people caught in the middle are losing hope.

Readers who are old enough to remember Dean Acheson will not be surprised that he makes an appearance in the novel, furthering the American policy of supporting any corrupt dictator who claims to be fighting communism. Acheson offers military support to Peru’s president by arming thousands of (mostly South American) soldiers and positioning them in Argentina in anticipation that they will “intervene” in Peru. Acheson is correctly portrayed as “a hopeless man” with “hopeless causes.” Naturally, Acheson supports the Peruvian president’s plan to fight communism by claiming more power for himself, effectively making himself a dictator. People in the streets cheer as members of the legislature are dragged away in handcuffs. So much for democracy. The U.S. is fine with anti-democratic dictatorships as long as the dictator isn’t a communist.

Newspapers are controlled with payoffs rather than overt censorship. The president intends to deal with terrorists by detaining them indefinitely without a trial and gathering information through torture, a reprehensible path that America later followed at Guantanamo and the various dark sites at which it stashed purported terrorists. The Peruvian president's plan also meets with Acheson’s approval. To me, the dissection of America’s exacerbation of Peru’s troubles is at least as interesting as the larger story.

The third section is narrated by a female journalist as she covers the election of 2001. A nationalist is running for president on a platform of expelling all people of foreign blood from Peru. To prove he’s tough, he advocates death by stoning as punishment for nearly every crime, including homosexuality. Sounds like a forerunner of MAGA. He will lose the election to a more enlightened but equally corrupt candidate. His daughter writes letters to the journalist that tell awful truths about her abusive father. Their differing perspectives call attention to the glory and shame of both Lima and its mountainous countryside.

The journalist travels to Andahuaylas in the mountains, where her grandfather was killed during the civil war because he was a shopkeeper. She is interested in the lives of the provincial women. She learns that they profess to be proud of their husbands despite their tendency to be violent, unemployed drunkards. It doesn’t occur to them that the post-war media attention the provinces are receiving has nothing to do with their husbands.

In the final section, two former terrorists meet again in a time of relative peace. One is now a teacher with a family, but he attempts to rekindle a relationship with a woman he once admired as a ruthless killer of dogs. She was captured, imprisoned, and repeatedly raped by soldiers. Now she has no papers and is selling herself on the street.

The changing perspectives over a period of years are a useful way to provide insight into the suffering of Peruvian people inside and outside of Lima because of both political leaders and purported revolutionaries. At the same time, the shifting perspectives impair the reader’s opportunity to become engaged with any character’s story.

I appreciated the novel’s illustration of the failure of leadership in Peru, both in the government and in the use of uncontrolled violence to challenge the government. The reader is nevertheless kept at a distance from the violence that caused so much harm. Characters talk about disappearances and rapes, but the story never focuses on an incident in a way that drives home the pain the country must have felt. For that reason, I admire the novel more as a history lesson than as a dramatic work.

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Cut and Thirst by Margaret Atwood

Short story published by ‎ Amazon Original Stories on May 1, 2024

Fern has MS, for which her three old (pardon me, “older”) friends blame eight men — or is it nine? — who caused her so much stress that they put her in “a wheelchair rolling downhill to the morgue.” The women plot revenge and since they are well educated, they quote Macbeth. The women all taught at universities at some point, but Myra wonders why anyone would want to teach these days, with students so eager to “rat the professors out for the slightest verbal misstep.” Look at Chrissy, who was mobbed on social media as being anti-woman for teaching ’Tis Pity She’s a Whore. Never mind that she chose it as an example of misogyny. In Myra’s view, kids today only want to study literary works in which everyone behaves perfectly all the time. “How French Revolution of them,” says Leonie. The story makes clear the difficulty of walking the line between sensitivity to the feelings of others and the excessive demands of expressive conformity on college campuses.

Amusing digressions to comment upon the state of the world (and the new cheeses they try during their weekly meetings) occupy more of the story than the plot to murder eight men (or is it nine?). The women all began their careers in the literary world (mostly as proofreaders), writing for each other in the hope that their work might reach a larger audience before opting for academia and steady paychecks. They still have connections in that world, mostly to the authors with whom they slept, but Fern is the only one who earns a living writing books.

Back to the plot. The eight or nine men savaged an anthology that Fern edited because she decided not to include a story by Humphrey Vacher, an affluent and conceited author who owns a few small press publications, the only publications that will consider their work. Because they owe Vacher, they trashed Fern’s work on the ground that it appealed to “the sloppy middle-age women and easily duped teenage girls” who are the reading public. They even condemned it as “girly,” a term they wouldn’t be allowed to use today.

Coming up with a successful assassination plan proves to be challenging. “Their respect for murderers is increasing: not so easy, this murdering business.” Ultimately they settle upon a workable revenge scheme that, naturally enough, does not go as planned.

The women learn that revenge, when served cold, might no longer have a purpose by the time it is executed. Which leads to the lesson that revenge is better left unserved. That’s always a lesson worthy of illustration, and Margaret Atwood does so in an enjoyable story that mixes amusing characters, pointed insights, and a few laugh-out-loud moments.

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Long Island by Colm Tóibín

Published by Scribner on May 7, 2024

I’m not always a fan of domestic drama, but I’m a huge fan of Colm Tóibín. He writes about couples in crisis with honesty rather than melodrama. Long Island is a sequel to Brooklyn, a continuation of that story of relationship uncertainty in the context of cultural clashes.

Readers of Brooklyn (or viewers of the movie) will recall that Eilis Lacey emigrated from Ireland to America, found a job, endured homesickness, met and married a young Italian man named Tony who was working as a plumber, returned to Ireland to attend her sister’s funeral, and found herself torn between remaining in Ireland (where both familiarity and a young Irishman named Jim Farrell appealed to her) and returning to her husband in Brooklyn. She decides in favor of her marriage, prompted in part by local gossip that makes it impossible to pretend she is single.

Twenty years later, Jim owns a pub in Enniscorthy. He is having a clandestine dalliance with Nancy Sheridan, a widow who owns a nearby chip shop. He has finally worked his way around to proposing, more or less, when Eilis comes back to visit her mother. Notwithstanding his relationship with Nancy, Jim cannot help revisiting the sense of loss he felt when Eilis left for America twenty years earlier.

During those twenty years, Tony and Eilis accomplished Tony’s dream of moving to Long Island. They built a home that was surrounded by the homes of Tony’s siblings and parents. Tony and Eilis had two kids and apparently had a steady marriage until it was rocked by news that Tony made a customer pregnant while fixing her leaking pipes. The customer’s husband wants nothing to do with Tony’s baby and threatens to leave it on Eilis’ doorstep after it is born. Eilis also wants nothing to do with the baby. She refuses to raise it and refuses to go along with Tony’s mother’s plan to raise the child.

After giving Tony an ultimatum, Eilis returns to Ireland to visit her aging mother, who has become no less intolerable during Eilis’ absence. She plans to have her children join her for her mother’s birthday celebration.

Eilis will, of course, encounter Jim. The novel’s drama comes from the choices Eilis must make — return to America and Tony, stay in Ireland with Jim, or return to America with Jim. Jim hasn’t stopped thinking about Eilis since she returned to America, but would he abandon his marriage plans with Nancy to be with Eilis? Would Eilis leave her family in America to be with Jim? The novel builds tension as it seems inevitable that Eilis and/or Nancy will learn that Jim has not been honest with either of them.

This sounds like a soap opera plot, and maybe it is, but Long Island is a character-driven novel that takes a deep dive into personalities that have been shaped by culture and family. Tóibín addresses the restrained emotional turmoil of his characters without resorting to contrivances.

The novel explores the relationship histories of Jim and Nancy as well as their relationship with each other. In a small town where everyone knows everything about everyone else, they have been surprisingly successful at keeping their late-night visits a secret. Yet secrets will out. Jim doesn’t want Nancy to know that she is his backup plan if he can’t convince Eilis to leave Tony. Nor does he want Eilis to know that he is sleeping with Nancy. In such a small community, is there any hope that Jim’s secrets will not be discovered?

Jim’s secrecy is motivated in part by the knowledge that Nancy will be subject to gossip if it becomes known that he left her for Eilis. The destructive nature of gossip and the impossibility of keeping secrets in a small Irish village was an important theme in Brooklyn that Tóibín reprises in the sequel.

Tóibín also illustrates how people in relationships attempt to manipulate each other. Nancy, for example, wants to sell the chip shop and become a homemaker after she marries Jim, but she schemes to influence Jim with subtle suggestions until he believes the idea is his own. At the same time, characters are afraid to say what they are thinking, perhaps for fear of another person’s reaction, perhaps because they fear the consequences of speaking their desires into reality. The story ends with a dramatic act of manipulation that different readers might judge in different ways.

The novel’s other key relationship is Eilis’ with her mother. For twenty years, her mother never acknowledged the pictures that Eilis sent of her children. When she arrives in Ireland, her mother doesn’t want to hear anything about her life in America. Yet Eilis’ mother has always nurtured a hidden pride in the grandchildren she never met, even if she has bottled up her emotions and refuses to share them with her daughter. After Eilis’ mother meets her grandchildren, she believes it is her right to turn her daughter’s life upside down.

My first takeaway from Long Island in conjunction with Brooklyn is that every choice we make gives birth to a potential regret about the choice we didn’t make. Or if not regret, at least curiosity about the path life might have taken if we had chosen differently.

My second takeaway is that no matter how we try to make choices that shape our lives, other people make their own choices that alter the course we have planned. We may or may not have the courage or strength to resist those choices. The choices made by others may take on an irresistible force. The inability to take complete control of our destiny might turn out to be a surprising joy or a dreadful peril, but either way, Long Island makes clear that it is a reality of life. As always, Tóibín’s powerful illustration of great truths makes Long Island a captivating novel.

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Our House in the Last World by Oscar Hijuelos

First published in 1983; published by Grand Central Publishing on April 9, 2024

Our House in the Last World is the story of an immigrant family that struggles to find its identity in America. The story of the Santinio family begins with Mercedes Sorrea. Her father was a poet but he made a living in the timber business in Cuba after emigrating from Spain. Mercedes had a good life until her father misjudged the reliability of Cuban politicians and suffered a financial downfall.

In 1937, while working as a ticket seller in a movie theater in Holguin, Mercedes meets Alejo Santinio. He woos her and, over the objections of his possessive sister Buita, marries her. Alejo’s sister Margarita is married to a cigar salesman in New York. She convinced Alejo to move to America.

Mercedes views the relocation as a chance to get away from Buita. Margarita has a baby (Ki-ki) and Mercedes soon has one of her own (Horacio). Unfortunately for Mercedes, Buita travels to New York when her husband’s band is booked to perform at a club. Buita once again makes Mercedes’ life miserable — a recurring theme in the story.

Although the plot is eventful — it covers almost four decades in the family’s life — the story is character driven. Alejo is a large, affable man with an ability to charm women that he will never lose. He works in a hotel kitchen. He dreams of owning a small store but he lacks the courage or drive to abandon the security of a union job. His willingness to work for low wages assures that he will never be fired, despite drinking on the job with his Cuban co-workers and stealing frozen steaks for his family.

Alejo is a product of his culture — a believer in the supremacy of men and of their entitlement to force their wives to submit to their will — but, despite his futile efforts to win the affection of his sons, he is only comfortable while drinking with his Cuban friends or seducing Cuban women. When Castro comes into power, he is pro-Castro until he becomes anti-Castro, but he’s happy to agree with any political sentiment expressed by a friend over a glass of whiskey.

Horacio is embarrassed by his father and escapes to a more promising life by joining the military. Horacio’s younger brother Hector contracts a serious illness while visiting Cuba with his parents. Mercedes treats Hector as an invalid from that point forward. As he grows up, Hector always feels “as if he were in costume, his true nature unknown to others and perhaps even to himself. He was part ‘Pop,’ part Mercedes; part Cuban, part American — all wrapped tightly inside a skin which he sometimes could not move.” The childless Buita’s scheming to lure Hector away from his mother never ends, and her residence in Miami — a cleaner, more Cuban-friendly city than New York, where she lives in an air-conditioned house with a pool — might assure that she prevails.

Mercedes has justifiable grievances about Alejo’s unwillingness to find a better job, his drinking and violence, and Buita’s constant criticism, but she’s allowed her grievances to overtake her personality. She is defined by her anger and fits of hysteria but — again, perhaps because she is a product of her culture — she would rather complain about Alejo than leave him.

Many novels about dysfunctional families never distinguish themselves from soap operas, but Our House in the Last World offers insights into why families might become dysfunctional. Alcohol is an obvious factor, but meddling by relatives, the difficulty of adjusting to a new life, and the clash of cultural values all play disruptive roles in the Santinio family. There are no monsters in the family. Alejo has been taught to control his wife and sons with violence but he restrains himself and looks for ways to express his love of his sons. Mercedes doesn’t mean to be a bad mother, but she does not have the tools to overcome her helplessness. She instead develops the kind of self-pitying personality that exhausts people. Horacio understands that Buita has poisoned Hector against his mother but he can do little to overcome his younger brother’s resentments.

The novel’s final section is a bit strange, as characters converse with ghosts and debate the reality of their memories and perceptions. One character exists briefly as an orchid. Too much attention is paid to dreams for my reality-based taste. As Oscar Hijuelos’ first novel, Our House in the Last World doesn’t quite have the reach or depth of The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love, but it explores similar themes. The book is a valuable contribution to the literature of the immigrant experience of American life.

This edition features an introduction by Junot Díaz.

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Glorious Exploits by Ferdia Lennon

Published by Henry Holt and Co. on March 26, 2024

I never tire of reading, but I do get tired of reading the same plots in book after book. Readers who think (in the words of Monty Python) it’s time “for something completely different” might want to check out Glorious Exploits. The novel is funny, surprising, and poignant.

The story is set in Syracuse early in 4th century BC. Syracuse at that point was populated by Greeks, but the prose is 21st century British (“Still a gobshite, I see.”).

Toward the end of the 5th century BC, Syracuse was invaded by Athens. With the help of Sparta, Syracuse defeated the Athenians. The story begins with captured Athenians imprisoned in a quarry, where they are visited by Lampo and Gelon, two unemployed potters. Like most Greeks in Syracuse, Lampo and Gelon are fans of Athenian theater. They are convinced that nobody does Euripides like the Athenians. On a visit to the quarry, Gelon gets it into his head to put on a production of Medea using the Athenians to act out the play. He finds a few who have acting experience and who know the parts. Lampo is taken with a green-eyed Athenian who he believes will be perfect for the part of Jason.

Lampo is even more taken with Lyra, a slave from Lydia (a kingdom that once existed on land that is now in Turkey). Lyra is owned by the proprietor of a tavern that Lampo often visits. Lampo falls in love with Lyra and promises to one day buy her freedom. That will be a difficult promise for an unemployed potter to keep, although it gives Lampo a resolve and purpose that he previously lacked.

Equal parts comedy and tragedy, the story follows Lampo as he works with Gelon to produce Medea. The captive Athenians are slowly starving to death, but the actors are incentivized by bread and wine. As Gelon and Lampo are casting the roles, they find an Athenian who not only knows Medea, but has acted in Euripides newest play, Trojan Women. Gelon believes that Athens is doomed and decides they must save the new play by bringing it to life. To that end, they plan to produce both plays.

Their plans come to the attention of a wealthy businessman named Tuireann who is passing through Syracuse. He provides the gold that Gelon and Lempo need to purchase sets and costumes to stage the play correctly. Yet not all Syracusans are pleased that the Athenians who killed their family members during a siege of the city are being treated so well. Will the plays ever be produced in the face of such hostility?

Glorious Exploits is in equal parts a comedy and a tragedy. Euripides (we are told at the end) “was ever in love with misfortune and believed the world a wounded thing that can only be healed by story.” Most of the story in Glorious Exploits unfolds between the invasion of Syracuse by Athens and its invasion by Carthage. During the years when Syracuse is free from invaders, Gelon and Lampo contrive to heal their wounded city with stories told by Euripides. Misfortune does indeed seem to be the human condition, particularly for slaves and captured soldiers who are starving to death in a pit. Some of them, at least, might be healed before the story ends.

The story told by Ferdia Lennon also has healing value. It is a story about the redemptive power of love and a story of the enduring power of Lampo’s rocky friendship with Gelon, but it is also the story of an unlikely friendship between Lampo and a conquered Athenian. The novel eventually becomes a story of how we should treat our enemies and whether we should think of other humans as enemies at all — at least in moments when we are not trying to kill each other.

Glorious Exploits has everything this reader could want: silliness, drama, excitement, unexpected twists, a story worth telling and lessons worth learning. The story is told in pitch-perfect prose that restores ancient Syracuse to its momentary glory. The year is young, but this is the best book I’ve read so far in 2024.

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