Ki'ti's Story 75000BC by Bonnye Matthews

Title: Ki'ti's Story, 75,000BC
Author: Bonnye Matthews
Publisher: Publication Consultants
Rating: WARTY!

DISCLOSURE: Unlike the majority of reviews in this blog, I've neither bought this book nor borrowed it from the library. This is a "galley" copy ebook, supplied by Net Galley. I'm not receiving (nor will I expect to receive or accept) remuneration for this review.

This is a Clan of the Cave Bear kind of a story, about primitive people in prehistory, based almost entirely on speculation. It sounded interesting initially, although I've actually never read any such stories before, but unfortunately I started having grave doubts about it right from page one (or in this case, page nine). The writing was awful, and offered nothing to hold my interest. Worse than this, nothing noteworthy happened in the entire first chapter, which I had to struggle to finish. The dialog was just ridiculous.

As I indicated, the page numbering is non-standard in this novel, with the cover actually being labeled as page one, so the novel itself doesn't begin until page nine, and the first ten pages or so consists of a huge info-dump with character after character not so much introduced as listed. It was way too much. There was no reason to get interested in any character because I had no chance to get to know them before the next character in line - quite literally in this case - was dumped on me.

This info-dump relates that the tribe, known as the People, was migrating from the threat of an erupting volcano towards a large cave where they figured they would be safe. The author seems unduly obsessed with describing every single person's hair. I have no idea why, because it contributed nothing to the story. The only real point of interest is that one of the tribe members (not Ki'ti) is a girl who looks unlike the others. Clearly the tribe is supposed to be Neanderthal, whereas she's supposedly Cro-Magnon, but how she came to be with them isn’t explored at that point. Nor is there any explanation offered as to why the Neanderthals are apparently peopling the US, when no Neanderthal fossils have ever been found in the Americas! Or maybe that's not the case. As I said, I quit after the first chapter because I couldn't stand to read any more of this.

The biggest problem was the language used, particularly in dialog. It's completely modern, with no attempt to try and evoke prehistory. While I appreciate an approach which doesn’t involve people burbling words like "Ugh", or speaking pigeon English, I also felt a loss of credibility when reading of Neanderthals chatting like two business people on the subway. For example, at one point (p19), one of the characters says, "I worry about our long-term survival" which just seemed downright weird to me.

The sentences employed too many modern terms, and seemed way too wordy and way too sophisticated for 75,000 or so years ago. This seemed particularly absurd given that these same people had no words for numbers, being forced to show one or more fingers to indicate quantities. I didn’t get the rationale behind that at all because there seemed to be none. You can't have these people presented as having this level of sophistication, yet remaining beyond primitive in such a crucial matter as enumeration.

In the introduction, which I wouldn't normally read, but which I did on this occasion, there appears the phrase: "…hundreds of thousands of geologic years…." This makes no sense! A year is a year. It isn't any longer in geology than it is in every day life. Neither did this term make any sense: "…digit of his forefinger…" Your forefinger is a digit. I think what the author meant was something like "to the depth of the first knuckle of his forefinger" so it didn't help my confidence in this novel to be hit with so many issues in so few pages.

The basic story is that of the peopling of the Americas, and this is intended to be a series (the second volume is already out). The author's premise is that this took place not by the recognized route of a northern land bridge opening up between Russia and the USA as the ocean levels dipped during an ice age, but by some other means and at a much earlier date. There's little undisputed supportive evidence for this. The best understanding - although it is disputed by some - is that the Clovis people were the first colonizers, and indeed, 80% of native Americans are descended from the Clovis people. The rest are a mixture of later immigrants, so 75,000BC as a time of colonization isn't looking good right now!

But the bottom line is that the story was beyond boring, the dialog was sorry, and the events non-eventful. I struggled even to finish chapter one and I cannot in good conscience recommend this novel.

Marta Oulie by Sigrid Undset

Title: Marta Oulie
Author: Sigrid Undset
Publisher: University of Minnesota Press
Rating: worthy!

Translated from Norwegian by Tiina Nunnally.

DISCLOSURE: Unlike the majority of reviews in this blog, I've neither bought this book nor borrowed it from the library. This is a "galley" copy ebook, supplied by Net Galley. I'm not receiving (nor will I expect to receive or accept) remuneration of any kind for this review. Since this is a new novel, this review is less detailed so as not to rob the writer of their story, but even so, it will probably still be more in-depth than you'll typically find elsewhere!

The novel covers much more than the lone topic of Marta's marital infidelity. It ventures deeply into feminism, it looks at morality, and it discusses the validity of religion, all in the context of what Marta and her husband are doing, how they're interacting, and how she's feeling towards him. Interestingly, Marta's lover, if he can be described as such, who is also Otto's business partner, hardly gets a look in. I found that rather intriguing.

This is very much a novel from Marta's perspective, told in first person PoV, which I normally detest, but which is not obnoxious here. That alone is commendable. It's annoying to have to pick novels without knowing from whose perspective they will be told (the blurbs almost never say - and I'm as guilty of this as anyone), so I always appreciate it when I inadvertently select one and discover that it's not nauseating!

On a technical matter, I have to say that while the Adobe Reader version of this is good, the kindle version is seriously hobbled by really annoying formatting issues. It looks like they simply took the PDF and dumped it unadjusted straight into Kindle format. Now you can argue that this is a "galley proof", and therefore we should not expect it to be perfect, but if you argue that, then I'm going to argue right back that while this novel is set in 1902, we are not! We're no longer living in 1907, when this was written, and novels had to be typeset using trays of metal characters laboriously put in place one-by-one line-by-line by hand! There is no excuse for sloppy proofs in this day and age!

Even rank amateurs have professional quality word processors, spell-checkers and formatting styles available to us! So no, there is no excuse for "galleys" that have line breaks in the middle of sentences or that have words like "UNCORRECTED" and "SALE" randomly mixed in with the text (the Adobe Reader version has "UNCORRECTED PROOF NOT FOR SALE" appearing on every page), or having one person's speech end and the next's take off with only a space (as opposed to a paragraph space) between the two separate quotations. If it had been corrected, though, I would never have enjoyed such amusing sentences as, "And I, the proper little merchant's wife who went around so nice and quiet, tending to my house, UNCORRECTED..."! Yes, this woman needs to be - as the butler put it in Stephen King's The Shining - CORRECTED! Or, "...my heart began to pound as a UNCORRECTED clammy sweat began to pour from my body..."! Correct that sweating, sister! Or how about this one: "It was a natural instinct that broke open inside me, raw SALE and insatiable." Yes, Marta Oulie sold out!

Known as Fru Marta Oulie in the original Norwegian, Undset wrote this in 1907 about a woman who was unfaithful to her husband, but it's not quite as simple a premise as it sounds. This was Sigrid Undset's first novel, but it was not her last. She enjoyed sufficient success to make a career out of writing, including a well-regarded trilogy which might be considered a fantasy story by modern audiences. Some of her life oddly paralleled Marta's. This novel is relevant today even as it seems understandably dated in some regards. It's relevant because there are still double-standards today, over a century later, in how women are perceived and treated in comparison with men. It's relevant in that feminism is just as much an issue today, when it shouldn't be, as it was back then when it was considered to be revolutionary.

You would think that over the course of a century these issues would have been long-ago resolved, and women would truly be equal, but it has not yet happened. It is easier to give voice to inequalities now than it was then, but it's also harder to be heard because ears have become lamentably inured to these issues over such a prolonged exposure. Feminism is no longer fresh in a culture which gobbles down fresh with an astounding voracity, and because it's not fresh any more, women have had to reach towards increasing extremes to get the message out. Consequently, feminists are now in danger of being mistakenly considered extremists instead of being correctly considered to be justified.

The novel starts out rather sensationally with the sentence "I have been unfaithful to my husband", which must have been far more shocking in 1907 than ever it is today. Had this been a modern novel, or even a modern historical novel, I would downgrade it for that. I think it has value in a 1907 novel; however, this did force me into a consideration of how this novel needs to be reviewed. Is it fair to review a 1907 novel by today's standards? There are arguments to be heard for either side. I asked this same question when I reviewed novels like Dracula, Frankenstein, and Pride and Prejudice. This is not a modern novel written in an historical setting, it's truly an historical novel translated into modern idiom. I think that latter fact is relevant: clearly those who brought this translation to published fruition think that this novel is relevant to our times, so reviewing it by the standards of our times isn't inappropriate.

In 1902 Norway, Marta is courted by and marries Otto. She tells us she loves him dearly. The two of them travel in Europe together (whilst Marta is a school teacher with commensurate salary, Otto is a partner in a business which is evidently doing well). They start a large family (by modern western standards), having two boys (Einar and Halfred) and then a girl (Ingrid), and it's with the arrival of the girl and the necessary simultaneous switch to larger accommodations that things begin to sour for Marta. It's not so much that Otto changes as it is that more of who he is starts seeping through un-modulated.

I don't know if Undset did this on purpose - juxtaposing the arrival of a girl (Ingrid, Otto's daughter) in the family with the attendant turmoil of lives being uprooted and moved around. If she did (and I am tempted to think she did), then that's pretty cool and smart on her part. Undset (which is reminiscent of 'upset' or 'unsettle' which is what this novel does) is a capable writer, but since this is a translation, it's really hard to know how much of the technical quality of the writing is due to Undset, and how much is due to her translator, Nunnally. Since I don't read Norwegian, I'll never know! However I take heart in the knowledge that even a bad translation cannot hide a decent plot! And no, this is not a comment on Nunnally's translation. Undset earned herself the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1928 - the last Norwegian woman to do so to date. I'm not a big fan of "literary" novels or of stories written by Nobel laureates, but I would have to assume she's a capable writer even were I lacking other indicators (which I'm not!).

The stakes ratchet up as Marta starts an affair almost accidentally with Henrik, and he starts to feature more in her life until Otto contracts TB, whereupon she feels such guilt that she ends the affair, but continues with the pregnancy. Is it Henrik's or Otto's? The only way to tell back then was by recalling with whom one had enjoyed sex at the right (or the wrong!) time, and since Otto became sick, there has been none with him, so Åse has to be Henrik's. This comes in intriguing counterpoint to the birth of Ingrid: whereas Otto's daughter stirred-up things uncomfortably and was a contributing factor in Marta's falling into an affair, Henrik's daughter has the opposite effect - bringing the affair to a precipitous termination, and sending Marta back to her husband emotionally.

In the end, I don't like Marta Oulie (although I do like the novel), and the reason I don't like her is not because she betrayed her husband, but because she betrayed everyone, including herself, and cruelly so in Henrik's case, who has a daughter with Marta, a child who he will never be allowed to know. I hope this isn't 'the moral of this story': that if you betray your husband you will become lonely and miserable, indecisive and inert for the rest of your life, because that runs completely contrary to the feminist portrayal of Marta which colors the earlier portion of this novel!

Again, there are formatting issues at the end, with the story ending seemingly unfinished and very abruptly, and being followed without a break by some notes on Undset's life, yet the author's name is spelled with all lower case characters, which is not only inexplicable, it also seemed rather an insult. I mean why make a big deal about bringing this woman's writing to a modern audience if you're going to slight her in this way?! She's not edward estlin cummings after all.... The name of Marta's lover appears on more than one occasion spelled with a lower case 'h', which is hard enough to explain since it's something which is easily fixed with search & replace, but to trot out the author's name like that is downright weird! However, I am willing to rate this novel as a worthy read, in the hope that the final version will have these formatting and case issues resolved.

The Tyrant's Daughter by JC Carleson

Title: The Tyrant's Daughter
Author: JC Carleson
Publisher: Random House Children's
Rating: WORTHY!

DISCLOSURE: Unlike the majority of reviews in this blog, I've neither bought this book nor borrowed it from the library. This is a "galley" copy ebook, supplied by Net Galley. I'm not receiving (nor will I expect to receive or accept) remuneration for this review.

This is a first person PoV story of Laila, a 15-year-old girl from what we learn is a Muslim nation. Her father was deposed from his dictatorial rôle and killed, leaving Laila, her mother, and her six-year-old brother to escape, courtesy of the CIA. They are now resident in a nondescript apartment outside of Washington DC in the USA, trying to cope with the massive shift in their circumstances and perspective.

Laila mulls over her feelings daily. Her disturbing discovery of what a brute her father was is one thing which hits her rather quickly. Information is much more freely available in the USA, notwithstanding the ignorant whining of conspiracy theorists. There is a problem here though, and it centers upon the question of whether Laila is ignorant or simply dumb. Yes, she's only fifteen, but for her to have grown up in the palace and not even happened upon so much as a whiff of a rumor about the true nature of her father's regime is simply not credible, especially not given her personality. But then Carleson gave her an inconsistent personality which cannot be explained away solely by her being a fifteen-year-old Muslim girl.

Laila has problems adjusting to life in the west, including getting a good handle on what it's like to live in a society where overkill is the norm (with store shelves flooded with endless variations on a single product, for example), and where women dress like "whores" (so her countrymen would say). Normally I'm not a fan of 1PoV stories, but in this one, it actually works. Laila's narration keeps the story moving and it isn't done in the most fake way possible by pretending it's a diary or letters; it's simply told like she's talking on the phone to a friend, and it's told in short bursts each centered around one theme. It unnerves us as much as she is unnerved because there is always something happening. Reminiscent of her home nation perhaps, Laila does not stand on cement or asphalt here, but upon shifting sand.

Laila is constantly taken by surprise by events: by for example, being unexpectedly introduced to a guy at school who was staring at her. His name, is Ian! Her discomfort with him reminds me of a time I went over to a friend's house and sat on the floor by another girl (since the room was crowded and there was nowhere else to sit). This girl, who was American, got into trouble with her Middle Eastern boyfriend because she remained sitting there, and did not move away from me! Yes, he thought he owned her! I cannot understand why girls tolerate, much less date boys like that. Not all boys and men who behave in so possessive a fashion come from the Middle East of course, and while in that area of the world, the girls may have little recourse against this behavior, in the USA, they do. They have every choice, not least of which is because not everyone who moves here from the Middle East is like that, so there is no reason not to make a wiser choice and still get what you want.

The problem for Laila is that the US government isn't getting what it wants, and an unscrupulous man named Gansler (maybe that's his name, maybe it isn't!) puts pressure on Laila rather than on her willful mother, Yasmin. Her mother is talking with people upon whom she would have spit just a few months before, had she met them in her own country. Perhaps she has a plan, but she hasn’t shared it with Laila. She's also pressuring Laila to make nice with the young boy who visits with these men, because he seems to be trying to derail whatever plans Laila's mother is trying to make, out of purest animosity. The simple solution would be to un-invite him from these meetings, but once again the pressure is on Laila to distract a boy who evidently hates her!

Here's where this novel goes off the rails rather too much for me. This is one of those absurd issues where there is hatred and suddenly there is no hatred in its place with no noticeable transition or rationale for such a transition. I can't believe that a young, headstrong male like Amir, with that much hatred in his eyes, would suddenly start talking to a young female like Laila for no reason whatsoever, and especially not when they're alone and unsupervised.

I started losing faith in the "reality" of this novel when Laila is talked into going to a dance with three girls from her school. Beforehand, they play dress-up with Laila ending-up in somewhat skimpy clothing which was entirely in keeping with fashion for an American teen girl, but entirely inappropriate for her, yet she plays along with this, pretending that she's acting - that she's really someone else in costume, not herself. I can see how a slightly rebellious teen like Laila, especially one who is displaced and is almost mesmerized by what she finds around her, would go for this, but it seemed far too easy. It seemed that she gave in to this far more readily than seemed in character for her, given what we’ve been told about her, and her internal monologue, but that wasn't the worst part. The worst was that Amir was also at the dance. Given what we’ve been shown of his character, I can’t believe that he'd go, especially since he wouldn’t believe that Laila would be there. I can believe he would react as he did, but for him to then inexplicably relinquish his anger seemed highly unlikely to me.

I liked that Laila thought that the girls wore too much make-up (she was probably right!) and I liked that she was unwilling to cede dominance to Amir, but this scene didn’t play well for me. It also betrayed Amir's sensibilities, too. If he feels it’s wrong for Laila to dance so lasciviously and so familiarly with others, then why doesn't he also feel it’s entirely inappropriate for him to be alone in the darkness with Laila, when he drags her outside? This seemed too contradictory and made little sense. It felt like Carleson was forcing her characters into behaviors which they wouldn’t naturally exhibit given what she's shared with us about them. It makes as little sense as it does later when Laila calls Amir to ask for money and he invites her to come over unescorted to his house full of men, not one of which is a relative of Laila's!

Her young brother Bastien is technically the king of his homeland since his father was murdered on orders from his religious zealot uncle, but he's a long way from that rôle now, and he doesn’t seem to care that much. Of the three of them, his mother Yasmin, his sister, and himself, he's the most at ease in his new home, but also the most spoiled. This is the next problem I had with this story. Bastien always seems to have what he wants: toys, comic books, a birthday party, but Laila's mother never has any money. Yet these are people are supposed to be crucial elements in some plan of the US government's, the very nation which spirited them out of their homeland and put them up in the USA. It makes no sense that these refugees, under the CIA's wing, would come home to find a rent overdue notice stuck on their door. It makes no sense that they're always completely penniless yet always seem have sufficient money to the day. It makes no sense that they're housed in some project instead of in some protected government location. It makes no sense that the newspapers would not be hounding them for their story. It makes no sense that they would be wandering around in public unescorted. Bastien could be assassinated, thereby removing any potential threat to the new leadership of his "kingdom". All of this let the novel down.

I found the section where Laila compares and contrasts her country (which goes unnamed) with the USA. This comes right after the section where she talks about meeting boys with two of her new girlfriends, and how segregated men and women are in her country, and then she goes right on to talk about PE being mixed, but the fact is that it’s not mixed in the US: not at her age. It’s highly segregated. The boys have their teams, the girls theirs, and they do not mix nor even play against each other. Sports in the USA is exactly like life in the more restrictive Muslim countries! The segregation of men and women is de rigeur in professional sport, but it begins long before that, in universities and colleges, and before that in high schools. What hypocrites we are! I wrote my novel Seasoning precisely out of disgust with this segregation.

The story is a bit confused and a bit confusing, but it’s worth reading for the PoV and for the twists and turns it takes, with both Laila and her mother vying for who does the best Niccolò Machiavelli impersonation. The ending is upbeat and intriguing, but the biggest prize-winner for me in this novel is Carleson's recognition that the USA isn't the only country in the world, nor is it the most important one for the overwhelming bulk of the world's population. This novel, though set in the USA, isn't at all about the USA. The author's note at the end, and the article about Benazir Bhutto after that, are both well worth reading, too. I rate this a worthy novel.