Books Set in Asia: Beijing, China

Kitchen Chinese, by Ann Mah (2010)

 

After aspiring writer Isabelle Lee lost her job as a fact-checker at a prestigious women’s magazine in New York, she decided to lick her wounds with a trip to China where her much older sister was living and working as an attorney.  Claire introduces Isabelle to Ed, who is the editor of Beijing NOW, a magazine aimed Expats.  Although her grasp of the language is limited to “kitchen Chinese”, Isabelle knows her Chinese food ~ it was what her emigrant mother prepared for her when she was growing up.  Isabelle lands a job as food writer for the magazine.  She soon learns, however, that live in China is quite different from live in New York.

 

Each chapter describes a different regional Chinese food.  The author’s descriptions of the dishes make one’s mouth water.  Recipes are found at the back of the book!

 

Read: July 30, 2023

4 Stars

Books Set in North America: Venice, California United States

Künstlers in Paradise, by Cathleen Schine (2023)

 

Twenty-four-year-old Julian has just lost his job, his roommate, and his New York apartment.  He runs back to his parents, expecting them to bail him out, but they don’t.  They are tired of his expectation of privilege.  So, he sets across the country to stay for a while with his 94-year-old grandmother, Salomea Künstler, who is recovering from a broken wrist.

 

Salomea Künstler was just 11-years-old when she fled with her parents and grandfather from Vienna at the start of World War II in 1939.  Although very young at the time, she was just old enough to know of the horrors of the Holocaust.  While not religious Jews, they were Jews none-the-less, and barely escaped with their lives. Much of her family perished.  She came from a family of musicians, and Los Angeles and Hollywood seemed a logical place for the family to land.

 

Salomea Künstler, known to friends as Mamie, still lives in the family bungalow along the beach in Venice, California.  Just as Julian arrives and begins interviewing for jobs, the world shuts down because of Covid-19.  Julian is now stuck with his grandmother and her aging housekeeper, Agatha.

 

With nothing much to do, Mamie begins to share with Julian the stories of her life.  Mamie has wonderful tales of life in Vienna and America with her beloved grandfather.  In America, her family also rubbed elbows with some of Hollywood’s biggest stars ~ Greta Garbo, Otto Preminger, Thomas Mann …

 

As Mamie is in the twilight of her life, Julian has yet to come into his own.  Being with Mamie and Agatha, however, jolt him into reevaluating what is important to him in the quiet world of the pandemic.

 

This was a delightful story.

 

Read: July 25, 2023

4 Stars

Books Set in North America, Mississippi, United States

The Tilted World, by Tom Franklin and Beth Ann Fennelly (2013)

This novel takes place in the fictional town of Hobnob Landing, Mississippi in 1927, during prohibition.  The town is located on the Mississippi River and is protected by levees, which are strained due to the heavy rains and high-water levels.

Young Dixie Clay lives with her husband in the outskirts of town.  She married young and soon found out that her handsome husband was not the man she thought he was.  Soon after their marriage, she discovered that he was a bootlegger with a violent side.  She perfected the recipe, and soon became known as making the best moonshine in the area.  She was able to command high prices for her alcohol, which her husband sells.

When two Federal revenue agents go missing, two more are sent out to find them.  One agent, Teddy Ingersoll, happens upon Dixie Clay and they begin a tentative friendship.  He was unaware that she was making moonshine.

This is set against the background of the great Mississippi flood, which decimated the South.  The town folk are preparing for the inevitable flood, and must decide whether to stay and sandbag the levees or breach the levees so that the City of New Orleans might be spared.

I enjoyed the first part of the book, but the last quarter seem a bit far fetched.

Read:  July 19, 2023

3.5 Stars

Books Set in Europe and North America: Turkey, Spain and New York

Kantika, by Elizabeth Graver (2023)

 

Although billed as a novel, Kantika is tightly based on the life of the author’s grandmother, Rebecca Cohen Baruch Levy.  The book spans from 1907 to 1950.  Rebecca was a young girl born to wealthy Jewish parents in Constantinople.  At the time of her birth, Jews, Muslims and Christians lived in a relative peaceful environment.  She even attended a Catholic school, where she spoke French.  She was also fluent in Ladino and Turkish.  After the fall of the Ottoman Empire, the family lost its wealth and Turkey became increasingly hostile to its Jewish citizens.  The family was forced to leave Turkey to seek employment elsewhere.  Her father found a menial job at a synagogue in Barcelona, Spain, where echoes of the Inquisition were still resonating.  They had a very uneasy life in Spain.  Rebecca set up a dress-making business and married one of the few single Jewish men in her community.  It was an unhappy marriage; her husband was basically a good-for-nothing.  He returned to his family home in Turkey, ostensibly to find employment married, and was gone for so long, that Rebecca took their two young sons to be reunited with him.  Once there, she learned that he had died.

 

Rachel ultimately was invited to immigrate to the United States to marry the widower of her best friend.  To meet her potential new husband, she must go through Cuba, but leave her young sons with family back in Spain.  That way, she figured, that if she didn’t like her proposed intended, she could more easily return to Spain.  Upon her second marriage, she also gained a disabled stepdaughter, Luna.  Her husband’s family was content to let Luna be, but Rebecca saw the girl had potential, despite her handicap.

 

Rebecca and her new husband, Sam, set up a life in New York with her two sons, his daughter, and eventually have three children of their own, one of whom was the author’s mother.

 

Kantika is Ladino for song.  This book was a beautiful song.

 

Read:  July 15, 2023

 

4.5 Stars

 

Books Set Somewhere in the World

If Cats Disappeared from the World, by Genki Kawamura (2012)

 

What if you learned that you had only days to live, but were offered an opportunity to extend your life?  That is the premise of this novel.  The narrator learns that he has only days to live.  Then, the devil arrives, dressed in a gaudy Hawaiian shirt, and offers him a deal.  The narrator will be granted an extra day of life for every item he eliminates from the world.  Since the narrator is in seemingly good health, despite the recent diagnosis of a brain tumor, he “sells his soul” to the devil.  He agrees and eliminates cell phones, movies, and clocks.  Then, when the devil suggests cats, the narrator stalls.  He is unable to imagine a world without his beloved cat, Cabbage.  (As a child, he had a cat named Lettuce, so when he acquired another cat as an adult, he named it after another leafy vegetable).  This little novel is a true delight, as it reflects on life and love.

 

Read: July 12, 2023

4 Stars

Books Set in Asia: Burma

The Art of Hearing Heartbeats, by Jen-Philip Sendker (2002)

This novel follows Julia Win, a young woman whose mother was American, and father was a well-known Wall Street attorney and Burmese national.  One day, when she was a child, her father ostensibly went to work and just disappeared.  Julia and her family knew nothing of her father’s life before he arrived in America.  He never shared his early life with his wife.  They only know that he was born and raised in Burma.

Years later, Julia finds an old love letter, written by her father to an unknown woman named Mi Mi.  She decides travel to Burma to seek out this mysterious woman.  Julia travels to a remote village in Burma that was once her father’s hometown.  There she meets a strange old man who tells her he has been waiting for her.  He tells her that his name is U Ba and that he knew Tin Win, Julia’s father.

U Ba proceeds to fill in the details of Tin Win’s early life.  An orphan at a young age, he was raised by a widowed aunt.  When he was 10 years old, he suddenly went blind.  His aunt took him to a monastery where he was taught to follow the wisdom of his heart.  He meets Mi Mi, who was born with deformed feet and can only scuttle around on all fours.  They immediately fall in love, and with their disabilities, form a magical ability to feel with their other senses.  After Tin Win regains his eyesight, he finds himself in America where he marries and has a family.  He never lost his love for Mi Mi, however.

This is a beautiful novel with some intriguing philosophical ideologies.

Read:  July 7, 2023

3 Stars