This is my symphony

I don’t think there is a family on the planet that hasn’t experienced some devastation or other: illness, betrayal, deception, loss. (And sometimes, sadly, all at once.) But some of us fight the undertow and rise above those waves–and some of us are caught in the rip current and end up alone, far from where we began. It’s the secrets we keep that are the most destructive force of all, I think; they’e either powerful forces that pull us under or daunting waves that lift us up … and over.

The Two-Family House by Lynda Cohen Loigman is the story of two brothers, Abe, kind and jovial, and Mort, dour and reserved. Even though the brothers owned and ran the family business together, it wasn’t clear whether or not they even liked each other. The brothers lived in a two-family house, one above the other. Their wives Helen and Rose were fast friends–like sisters, they were. Abe had four sons, and Mort had three daughters. The house was lively and filled with love. Until it wasn’t.

After the birth of their last babies–born on the same night in the throws of a blizzard, attended only by a midwife–tensions between the wives grew. Why, no one knew. Abe and Helen finally had a daughter, and Mort and Rose, their longed-for son. But the wives had a secret, one born of discontent. So Rose became jealous of Helen, and Helen mourned when Rose could not. Abe and Mort had even less to say to each other, and finally, the families spun out and out, separated by what they did not know.

Love and Other Consolation Prizes opens with Ernest Young walking the grounds of the 1962 Seattle World’s Fair, unsettled by his wife Gracie’s fall into madness, trying to make sense of the loss of their family home to an urban renewal project. They had lived a good life until the past year. But Ernest and Gracie had secrets, too.

Young Ernest came from China, sold by his starving mother to a ship captain bound for America. Both, so the sales pitch went, would have a chance at a better life. On the ship Ernest, still Yung then, met Fahn, a girl from Japan who would change his life. Yung spent his first years in America at the Washington State Children’s home before he was auctioned off in a raffle at the 1902 World’s Fair. The woman who rescued Yung, Madame Flora, owned a brothel. But it was in her home that he learned the true meaning of family … and fell in love.

Ernest’s secret is threatened when his daughter JuJu, an aspiring journalist, puts two and two together after finding an old newspaper clipping about a boy raffled off at the 1909 World’s Fair. JuJu has taken Gracie in after the couple lost their home. Her fragile mental condition is threatened by Ernest, and she is often agitate in his presence. Because Gracie has a secret, too, and it’s best she be kept as calm as possible, so her mad raving doesn’t give it away. For dignity’s sake, the doctor who treats her make-believes the illness is a form of viral meningitis . But Gracie’s madness was caused by neurosyphilis, contracted from her days in the Water Trade. Ernest met Gracie at Madame Flora’s.

It’s only when Ernest and Gracie’s secret comes to light that they can both put their demons to rest, and get back to the business of loving each other.

As it should be.

A Constellation of Vital Phenomena
Anthony Marra
Hogart

I confess to knowing nothing about the conflict in Chechnya. Okay, like many Americans (I’m assuming) I know a little. I know Chechen rebels took hostages in a Moscow theater. I know the Boston Marathon bombers were radicalized ethnic Chechen-Americans. But my eyes always glazed over whenever PBS News Hour featured a story on the wars and although I’m a daily NPR listener, I turned a deaf ear to any news Chechen. If you’d asked me to find it on the map, I couldn’t.

But like all good fiction, Anthony Marra’s extraordinary novel A Constellation of Vital Phenomena touched both my mind and my heart. (I have a list of articles to read about Russia’a involvement in Chechnya, and God bless Wikipedia for a quick tutorial.)

Spanning ten years and both Chechen wars, Marra tells the story of three neighboring families in the small village of Eldar, as well as two sisters in Volchansk. The novel opens with neighbor Dokka taken away in the night by Russian Feds to the Landfill (that name says it all), his house burned, and  neighbor Akhmed hurrying Dokka’s eight-year-0ld daughter Havaa to safety at the city hospital in Volchansk.

There they meet the head surgeon Sonja (who also happens to be the only surgeon), and she is none to pleased to find them in her waiting room. Akhmed makes the case that since he did attend medical school years ago, he might be of some use–even though he graduated in the bottom three percent of his class. Anything to find sanctuary for Havaa. Sonja, an ethnic Russian, runs on amphetamines, cigarettes, and contempt. But she’s desperate for help. She’s also desperate to find her sister Natasha, gone for nearly two years to where Sonja doesn’t know.

Havaa spends her days trailing Sonja or simply sitting in the waiting room clutching her blue suitcase of souvenirs, flotsam and jetsam that refugees had given her father as payment for a night (or two) in their house on the way to refugee camps. Havaa doesn’t open her suitcase until the end of the novel, and when she does, she reveals a poignant surprise.

Tucked next to Akhmed’s house is the old professor Khassan, who has spent most of his life writing a history of the Chechen people, and his informant son Ramzan, who has made eleven villagers disappear, but whose trade as a snitch keeps the electricity on, food in the refrigerator, and Khassan’s insulin needs supplied. Father and son haven’t spoken in months, but it is Ramzan’s last betrayal that sets the story in motion.

A Constellation of Vital Phenomena is a sweeping novel that uncovers the characters’ pasts and propels them into the future. Each chapter is set in one of the ten years the book covers and the alternating stories require the reader’s close attention. It’s also a difficult book to read. There’s nothing easy about torture. Sex slavery. Dismemberment. Murder. But it’s a story about love as much as it is about hate. About what connects us as much as what divides us. Most of us experience (at some point or another) estrangement from those we love dearly, and Marro’s long view gives us hope.

Marra’s writing is lush and evocative, his storytelling tender, the ending oh-so-satisfying. I’m only sorry A Constellation of Vital Phenomena sat neglected on my TBR pile for so long.

I didn’t give it a second thought when friend Denice emailed the first week in September to ask if I would take time off work to hear writer Elizabeth Berg speak at the Kent District Library in November. I’m sure you can guess my answer. What better way for an English teacher to spend a personal day, no?!

Ms. Berg is every bit as down-to-earth as her characters: she is funny and warm and took the time to autograph every attendee’s book. There’s nothing like getting a peek into the life of a writer I’ve read and loved. Berg begins her day writing and said it’s a “great job when you can work in your pajamas”, drink “90 cups of coffee”, and then take the dog for a walk. (Sounds pretty good to me, too!) She was also open about the more creative aspects of the writing life, saying she doesn’t know a book’s ending when she begins writing. Writing is a “process of discovery and surprise” and Berg believes in the “wisdom and creativity in [the] subconscious”.

We listened as Berg read passages from Arthur Truluv and  she confessed that the book is now her favorite. (It might be mine, too.) She graciously took the time to answer audience questions and when asked if there was a story she hadn’t written yet, Berg said she always has an idea for another book … adding “may it ever be so”.

I’m pretty sure her readers feel the same.