Alvah's Books

Lucky Girl
By Mei-Ling Hopgood
Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill 2009
256 pages
$23.95

Reviewed by Alice Folkart

Mei-ling Hopgood’s Lucky Girl, a Memoir, maps the author’s journey of self-discovery. Hopgood was one of the first Asian children adopted by Americans after the Korean War. She was brought to the Midwest and given the best of everything, but, as she grew up, never felt as if she belonged. She became the perfect child–smart, talented, charming and popular. But, always wondered if there were anyplace where she would fit in.

This unease informs her childhood and teen years, and upon graduating from college, her adoptive parents reveal to her that she had not been orphaned, but had been given away. They encourage her to connect with her birth family, and so she makes the trip to Asia. She arrives in Taiwan and, surrounded by crowds of people who all look like her, for the first time in her life feels at home.

Overjoyed, she meets her mother, father and a gaggle of sisters, but her elation is short-lived as she encounters an almost impenetrable wall of language, culture, secrets and misunderstandings. Even a well-meaning sister, the only one who speaks any English, cannot help her scale it.

Mei-ling’s tragedy is that in finally finding her roots, she discovers that she’ll never be able to return to them. She is neither wholly Asian nor completely American, and she realizes that she may never fit in anywhere. The final irony is that she later settles in Argentina with her journalist husband, settles for being a permanent alien.

In Taiwan, she is lovingly accepted by her sisters, works hard to connect with her tradition-hugging birth mother, develops a strong dislike of her greedy, feckless father, and stumbles upon shocking family secrets. She learns that she and another sister had been given up for adoption because of their father’s greed and drive for a male heir-as he says, someone to worship him after he is gone, something that in the Taoist scheme of things daughters are not fit to do. Her birth mother had little say in the matter. The adoptions were arranged without her agreement, prices set, and the two little girls more or less sold.

The central question of the book is, “Is Mei-ling Hopgood a ‘lucky girl?” Her sisters say that she was lucky that she wasn’t sold to a Taiwanese family that would have raised her to be sold into a brothel at puberty. At least, they say, “You went to America, to nice people. That was ‘lucky.’” She was ‘lucky’ to be treasured by her American family, to be given every advantage, even the opportunity to explore her origins. But, she feels ‘unlucky.’ Hers has been, as the Chinese say, an ‘interesting life.’

Unfortunately, Ms Hopgood doesn’t have the story-telling skills to bring her tale to life. Lucky Girl, is a taxing read. The author’s English is awkward, almost as if it were a learned language. Poor or wrong word choices disturb the flow of the prose; the narrative voice is unstable, ranging from girl-friend chattiness to dry reportage; problems with matters of fact leave the reader wondering. And, finally, awkward phrasing and a plethora of grammatical errors give the book an amateurish air,

Lucky Girl does not have the polish of professional work. In fact, were it not for the author’s acknowledgments to an editor and an agent, one would think that manuscript was an early draft that had not yet been edited.

Mei-ling Hopgood’s Lucky Girl, a Memoir, might interest other cross-cultural adoptees and/or their parents, but would likely not engage the fastidious general reader.

About Alice Folkart

Alice Folkart, a California transplant, lives and write on the island of Oahu.  Her short fiction, reviews and poetry have been published in many on-line and print journals. She co-directs an on-line poetry workshop and helps to administer the Practice forum of the Internet Writing Workshop.  Her cat weighs 22 lbs.  Her husband plays the trombone.

. . . two new books. Hooray. It feels like my birthday all over again.

A World I Never Made by James LePore

and. . .

Ratio: The Simple Codes behind the Craft of Everyday Cooking, by Michael Ruhlman

Thanks to Story Planet and Scribner!

A Mad Desire to Dance: A Novel
By Elie Wiesel (Translated from the French by Catherine Temerson)
Alfred A. Knopf
288 pages
$25.00

Reviewed by S. L. Weis

In his latest work, Wiesel invites us to consider many things, chief among them, the nature of madness. Is the man who mutters to himself in the street mad? Or is it the man who can’t suppress overwhelming emotions, who distances himself from painful memories by projecting them onto fictitious characters? Or is it the rest of us who rush through our neatly structured lives so as not to become too mesmerized by the bottomless well of all that we stand to lose?

The story is told through the alternating narratives of two main characters, Doriel Waldman and Dr. Thérèse Goldschmidt, Waldman’s psychotherapist. Waldman is a 60 year-old holocaust survivor pursued by memories that haunt him like evil spirits (dybbuks). The story is told in alternating first-person points of view, predominantly from Waldman’s perspective, interspersed with “notes” from Dr. Goldschmidt.

Waldman was a child when the war ended. His mother, a blond with a false Aryan identity card, leaves to fight with the resistance. He and his father spend their days beneath the subfloor of a barn and their nights crouched in the attic of an increasingly hostile landlord. Though they survive the war, his parents die shortly thereafter in a car accident and he is sent to live with an uncle in Brooklyn. Eventually, Waldman receives a large bequest, large enough that he need never work again. Through this presumed act of kindness, Waldman is deprived of even the gift of necessity; the daily rhythm that anesthetizes by distraction. Instead, Waldman lives a peripatetic existence, having brief and unsatisfying encounters with other people, in whom he holds out hope for a spiritual connection.

Goldschmidt’s narrative is really less a clinical account than a window into her own life, little of which is fully explicated. In some instances, it serves only to describe how her relationship to Waldman is affecting her marriage. The result is not particularly convincing, in part because the psychological tension between Waldman and Goldschmidt is never fully developed; it flares and grows cold, but rarely are the sources of tension fully explored. The result feels at times haphazard. The reader is left confused about exactly why it is that Waldman is so disturbing to Goldschmidt whose occasional narratives are a plot device the author uses to shed a more structured and objective light on the central character.

A Mad Desire to Dance employs madness as both theme and structure. Madness as a concept is discussed extensively but never defined. It is revealed implicitly through Waldman’s narrative as an inability to control emotion, to clearly distinguish the real from the fantastical, and to simultaneously both suppress painful memories/ideas and to face them. Wiesel’s treatment of madness encapsulates all of this as well as the higher-order social structures that foster genocide and intolerance.

However, madness as structure is not an easy narrative form. The narrative does not progress through the usual sequence of conflict-resolution, but swirls and surges in interwoven, fragmentary snippets, some real some mystical. The effect is pointillist. If one stands back far enough, a pattern emerges. The picture is of a life half-lived, half dreamed, by man so broken and wounded by childhood loss that he is beyond both human fellowship and the linearity of time.

It would be impossible to delve into all of the other themes this book touches upon: God, divine and human love, the morality of sex, Freudian psychology, Zionism, Kabalism. It is a rich tapestry of ideas and frustratingly underdeveloped yet poignant stories which emerge from the gloom of the character’s musings on spirituality and relationships, brutality, family and friendships. The effect is too much and yet, not quite enough; too many themes insufficiently examined.

However, though the effect may be occasionally frustrating, what this book conjures is a near-perfect specimen of the person he envisioned. Waldman is a man impelled by half-digested terrors that drive him through an emotional desert, brushing against and being repelled by people, randomly casting about to find the places that touch but don’t wound. This child who didn’t literally die of his grief is in later life unable to find a way out of his emotional exile. Instead, he fills his with life half-hearted religious devotion and reaches for things that he thinks are correct to want, only to find that he doesn’t want them. He is impetuous and filled with repressed sexual fantasies of women, some of whom he suspects don’t even exist. He lives as a shadowy observer, watching and even role-playing as a participant, picking up and discarding people, in search of a person whose own sadness mirrors his own (“the girl with the dark eyes and the smile of a frightened child”). In short: a soul mate.

The true beauty of the story lies is in its intense contemplation of the issues that touch all humanity; charity in the face of unfathomable cruelty and how one is born into this world essentially alone, but must find salvation through attachments, even if it means risking disappointment and loss.

HARDCOVER FICTION
1. THE 8TH CONFESSION, by James Patterson and Maxine Paetro
2. LOVER AVENGED, by J. R. Ward
3. FIRST FAMILY, by David Baldacci
4. SUMMER ON BLOSSOM STREET, by Debbie Macomber
5. TEA TIME FOR THE TRADITIONALLY BUILT, by Alexander McCall Smith

HARDCOVER NONFICTION
1. LIBERTY AND TYRANNY, by Mark R. Levin
2. OUTLIERS, by Malcolm Gladwell
3. THE GIRLS FROM AMES, by Jeffrey Zaslow
4. ALWAYS LOOKING UP, by Michael J. Fox
5. COLUMBINE, by Dave Cullen

PAPERBACK TRADE FICTION
1. VISION IN WHITE, by Nora Roberts
2. THE SHACK, by William P. Young
3. CITY OF THIEVES, by David Benioff
4. 7TH HEAVEN, by James Patterson and Maxine Paetro
5. PRIDE AND PREJUDICE AND ZOMBIES, by Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith

PAPERBACK MASS-MARKET FICTION
1. BURNING WILD, by Christine Feehan
2. AT LAST COMES LOVE, by Mary Balogh
3. SAIL, by James Patterson and Howard Roughan
4. ANGELS AND DEMONS, by Dan Brown
5. DARK SUMMER, by Iris Johansen

PAPERBACK NONFICTION
1. THREE CUPS OF TEA, by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin
2. LONE SURVIVOR, by Marcus Luttrell with Patrick Robinson
3. IN DEFENSE OF FOOD, by Michael Pollan
4. THE MIDDLE PLACE, by Kelly Corrigan
5. I HOPE THEY SERVE BEER IN HELL, by Tucker Max

HARDCOVER ADVICE
1. ACT LIKE A LADY, THINK LIKE A MAN, by Steve Harvey with Denene Millner
2. MASTER YOUR METABOLISM, by Jillian Michaels with Mariska van Aalst
3. THE LAST LECTURE, by Randy Pausch with Jeffrey Zaslow
4. THE ULTIMATE DEPRESSION SURVIVAL GUIDE, by Martin D. Weiss
5. THE SECRET, by Rhonda Byrne

PAPERBACK ADVICE
1. HUNGRY GIRL 200 UNDER 200, by Lisa Lillien
2. THE LOVE DARE, by Stephen and Alex Kendrick with Lawrence Kimbrough
3. NATURALLY THIN, by Bethenny Frankel with Eve Adamson
4. WHAT TO EXPECT WHEN YOU’RE EXPECTING, by Heidi Murkoff and Sharon Mazel
5. THE FIVE LOVE LANGUAGES, by Gary Chapman

CHILDREN’S BOOKS
1. LISTEN TO THE WIND, by Greg Mortenson and Susan L. Roth
2. THE CURIOUS GARDEN, written and illustrated by Peter Brown
3. EXPLORER EXTRAORDINAIRE!, by Jane O’Connor
4. GALLOP!, written and illustrated by Rufus Butler Seder
5. THE VERY HUNGRY CATERPILLAR, written and illustrated by Eric Carle

As I previously posted, Sundays have become a day of fancy cooking and I thought that this would be an appropriate introduction to a new category: Cookbooks.

I love my cookbooks as much as my other books, and I’ve separated the ones I use often and keep them on a shelf, within easy reach, in the kitchen. My favorite one is an Italian cookbook that I was introduced to at a dinner party nearly 20 years ago. And that’s Lynn Rossetto Kasper’s The Splendid Table.

The name might be familiar to you if you’re a listener of NPR. Kasper has a radio show with the same title.For readers who don’t know Kasper, she was named one of the twelve best cooking teachers by the James Beard Foundation. Her research for the books began in the 1980s while Kasper was living in Europe. She explored Emilia-Romagna, working with home cooks, chefs, historians, and the culinary artisans who still prepare traditional foods
in the old way

The Splendid Table:Recipes from Emilia-Romagna, the Heartland of Northern Italian Food
by Lynn Rossetto Kasper
William Morrow and Company, 1992
530 pages, illustrated with 24 pages in full color
$39.95

I’m departing from third person reviews since cooking and eating is such a personal venture. I can emphatically state that The Splendid Table is my favorite cookbook. And becasue I love it so much, I’ve given it as a gift for Christmas, birthdays, Mother’s Day, anniversaries, and wedding showers.

If you like pasta then you’ll flip over the 56 recipes that are included in this book. But if you’re looking for more than just pasta, you’ll find something for meat, game, poultry lovers, and even vegeterians. Not sure what wine to serve? Kapser offers some terrific suggestions, as well as menu recommendations. Like some history to go with your meals? Kasper provides wonderful historical anecdotes about the Borgias, Rossini, Verdi, Toscanini, and Napoleon’s Empress Marie Louise and their devotion to the region’s food.

The first recipe I tried almost 20 years ago was Garganelli with Roasted Peppers, Peas, and Cream. As Kasper writes,

There is a lovely play of sweet, flavors here–roasted peppers, peas, cream and prosciutto. The dish is made in no time. By not reducing the cream, but merely heating it, the pasta maintains an unexpected lightness.

In terms of flavor and texture, it is very light. However, if it does become a favorite and you make it often–as I did years ago, don’t be surprised by your expanding waistline.

In recipes that require butter, olive oil or cream, Kasper doesn’t skimp or substitute with margarines or non-fat yogurts. Sometimes, she writes that you can subtitue butter with olive oil, but, in general, she always sticks to the traditional recipe.

And that’s the beauty of The Splendid Table–the ingredients. I love going to the green market and getting fresh herbs and vegetables (organic is even better). and I’m in absolute heaven shopping at specialty gourmet stores for cheeses, prosciutto, and pancetta.

When the book was first published, some of the key ingredients were difficult to find if you didn’t live in or a near a metropolitan area, but now just about every supermarket carries Prosciutto di Parma, Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese or balsmaic vinegar. If you have questions of how to select ingredients, Kasper includes, “A Guide to Ingredients” that shares the secrets of how to select, use, and store fresh herbs, mushrooms, prosciutto, olive oils and much more.

Some of the recipes can be a challenging to make. I’ve shied away from the ragus, making fresh pasta, and the
desserts mostly because of time-constraints (but let’s face it, none of these recipes are waistline friendly)

As for tonight’s dinner, it’s one that I’ve made on several occasions: Salad of Tart Greens with Prosciutto and Warm Balsamic Dressing and Spaghetti with Anchovies and Melting Onions. Here’s what Kasper has to say,

From Ferrara’s Po delta, this in one of those easily-put-together dishes, a typical Sunday-night supper of the area. I have found that even those who claim to dislike anchovies enjoy their mild flavor, where their assertiveness is tamed by the sweet carmelized onions. Traditionally, pastas with fish are served without cheese. In this dish a few spoonfuls of olive oil season the pasta just before serving.

Later this evening, I’ll post photographs of the finished dishes. If you want the recipes for the dishes mentioned, leave your name and email in the comments section.

Below is a review I wrote that appeared on the website for Political Affairs Magazine– an online magazine of ideology, politics, and culture. The publication’s mission is to  provide analysis and investigate what is new and changing in the world – from a working-class point of view.  Political Affairs is a publication of the Communist Party, USA

American Wars: Illusions & Realities
Edited by Paul Buchheit
Paperback: 192 pages
Clarity Press, 2008.

In this slender, but thought-provoking book, Paul Buchheit, professor at Chicago Colleges, founder of fightingpoverty.org and co-founder of Global Initiative Chicago, packs a wallop in presenting the glorified illusions of war, juxtaposing them with the realities and horrors of military force and occupation.

Divided into six sections that each examine a highly regarded human value (Honor, Truthfulness, Self-Awareness, Compassion, Altruism, Realism) every essay is presented with a specific and distorted illusion – typically advocated by hawks in government and big business – followed by a statement reflecting the true nature of war. Professor Buchheit and a distinguished group of writers, which include academic scholars, veterans, and experienced researchers, and who have been in the forefront of the human rights and peace movements, challenge the conventional rhetoric of warfare and our forced attempts to democratize the world.

To read the rest of the review, click on the title.

This little news item appeared on the online edition of the Columbia Spectator, Columbia University’s newspaper. I can’t express how sad this makes me. I worked in that neighborhood for many years. During my lunch or after work, I’d always stop by to buy a book or two.  Below are the first few paragraphs of the article

Morningside Books to close next month
by Sam Levin

Morningside Bookshop, a family-owned bookstore now 5 years old, will be permanently closing its doors in June, owner Peter Soter announced on Wednesday.

This store, located on 114th and Broadway, has Columbia as its landlord. Soter said that, though the University has been “very supportive, and very helpful,” he is simply not making enough money to stay open.

To read the rest of the article, click on the title.

ALMOST A MIRACLE: The American Victory in the War of Independence
By John Ferling
Oxford University Press, 2007
$29.95

Reviewed by Randall Radic

The title of John Ferling’s unrestrained work is Almost A Miracle. Drop the adverb from the title and the sheer virtuosity and genius of the book is accurately expressed. For Ferling’s book is indeed ‘a miracle.’

Almost A Miracle takes the reader inside the War of Independence, and reveals the difficulties faced by commanding officers on both sides of the conflict, along with the courage, steadfastness and suffering of common soldiers – the men who did most of the dying. And die they did, in astonishing numbers. Until the book is digested, the average reader probably has no frame of reference for the pure bloodiness of the war. Much of the blood was shed in the South, Georgia and the Carolinas – a theater rarely mentioned in most histories of the war – which was where, according to Ferling, that the war was actually won.

Ferling points out that, in effect, the British were fighting a battle on two fronts: the northeast and the southeast. The defeat of the British in the South – a defeat that cost both sides dearly – led to Cornwallis’ surrender at Yorktown.

What makes Ferling’s book so real is his portrayal of the leading players in the war. Men like Washington, Hamilton, Lafayette, and Franklin. When gazing at these historical figures, Ferling doesn’t just narrate facts. He goes deeper, examining and analyzing personalities and abilities. As Ferling states in his Introduction, “I came to see both more flaws and greater virtues in Washington’s leadership, arrived at a deeper appreciation of Nathanael Greene, and grew to see Charles Lee as an especially tragic figure, a man at once possessed of superlative soldierly qualities and laden with ruinous character defects.”

Indeed, Ferling provides Benedict Arnold with one of the most fair and accurate appraisals ever written. He rightly points out that Arnold was probably a military genius and a master manipulator of men. Benedict Arnold was a man full of energy and determination. Sadly, though, along with tremendous talent, Arnold swarmed with a whole congerie of neuroses.

Such insights take Ferling’s book beyond merely being adequate and make it wonderful. Because wars are fought by people, and it’s the human aspect – in all its immediacy and emotion – that gives history meaning and pizzazz. People, with all their flaws and strengths, are what make the story interesting. If the stories that come out of the War for Independence were not populated by real people, who would care?

Ferling’s book makes readers care, that’s how absorbing it is. And because they care, they cavil.

Some reviewers have taken Ferling to task for his insights, saying they are a biased example of shallow hero-bashing. Such assertions are balderdash. Ferling has the intestinal fortitude to call it as he sees it, which in other terms is called “academic honesty.” The historian’s job is not to candy-coat history so it tastes sweet can be swallowed easily. Rather, the historian opens the doors and windows to past events, exposing them to light and fresh air. Ferling accomplishes this task.

Not only does Ferling unmask his subject matter, telling it like it is, but he then writes about it in a clear lucid style. He avoids the usual stuffy, boring academic phraseology, eschewing recondite terminology. Ferling is not trying to impress the reader with his vocabulary. Instead, he communicates, which is what good writing is all about. Shunning long, convoluted sentences, Ferling uses what was once the gold standard of the English language: subject, verb, object. And every so often he throws in some adverbs and adjectives to add action and color to the text.

Almost A Miracle is a stunningly good book, one that every student of the War for Independence should read. More than that, it’s a book that any amateur historian will love, because it’s entertaining to read. In fact, for anyone who wants to know how and why and when and where America to be America, this book is essential reading. Besides that – it’s got zest. Which means it’s rated E for everyone.

About Randall Radic

Randall Radic, a former Old Catholic priest and a convicted felon, lives in Northern California where he reads, writes and smokes cigars. He is the author of A Priest in Hell: Gangs, Murderers and Snitching in a California Jail, and the forthcoming Gone To Hell: True Crimes of America’s Clergy.     

Victoria Mixon emailed me to let me know that she’s posting the  literary mash-up submissions. If you’d like to read them along with three essays on “Making FunnyFunny,” please visit www.victoriamixon.com.

My husband and I are have gotten in the habit of making some pretty fancy meals on Sundays. This past Sunday was roast pork loin stuffed with figs, almonds and green olives accompanied by sauteed spinach with coriander and rosemary garlic roasted new potatoes. The week before was my version of a poor man’s paella with shrimp and zucchini.

We have a nice collection of cooksbooks that we use often and I thought, maybe since we love to cook and we love adding to our cookbook collection, so why not include reviews of our favorites and upcoming cookbooks?

The plan was to announce this on Sunday or closer to the weekend, but I’m simply too excited by this new event that I wanted to announce it today. Cookbook reviews will be posted every Sunday and I’ll include a favorite recipe with an accompanying photo of my culinary creation.  

Stay tuned and I hope that I inspire you to some gastronomic adventures in your own kitchen (and don’t blame me if you gain weight!)