Title: A Confusion of Languages
Author: Siobahn Fallon
Edition: G.P. Putnam & Sons, 2017
Setting: Jordan
Genre: Contemporary Literature
Blurb: "A searing debut novel ...
about jealousy, the unpredictable path of friendship, and the secrets
kept in marriage, all set within the U.S. expat community of the Middle
East during the rise of the Arab Spring."
Cassie, married to a soldier working at the US Embassy in Jordan has signed on to be a mentor to a new arrival, Margaret. Also married to a soldier working at the Embassy, Margaret is a free-spirited young mother who doesn't doesn't seem to feel that the rules that Cassie tries to teach her, the rules that govern the lives of embassy employees and staff, apply to her.
The novel begins with the husbands out of town and Cassie, Margaret, and her baby involved in a fender-bender on the streets of Amman. Margaret is required to go to the police station to attend to paperwork (and a small bribe, says Cassie), while Cassie returns to Margaret's home to watch the baby. When Margaret doesn't return, Cassie searches Margaret's home and finds her journal, and from there the story unfolds in flashback.
This is a very interesting story about intentions, aspirations, struggles, friendships, marriage, cultural differences and the difficulty of communicating about all of those things. That difficulty is the "confusion of languages" the title alludes to. And there are so many languages! Military jargon, the language of diplomacy and custom, body language, subtext, and literally the different languages spoken by the American and Jordanian characters.
I liked the excellent writing, the very human characters with their questionable decisions, the theme of the difficult of comprehending and communicating with others, and the originality of the story. This would be an excellent book club choice as there is much to debate and discuss in the story.
This month we're starting with Arthur Golden's 1997 bestseller, Memoirs of a Geisha. I read this novel many years ago as part of an "Around the World" book challenge: read a book set in or about a country in each of six continents: Asia, Europe, Africa, North America, South America, Australia/Oceania. The few books set in Antarctica tend to be about polar exploration or natural history, and there aren't a lot to choose from, so the challenge allowed us to either pick one of them or read a second book about a continent we particularly wanted to "explore." For the Asia part of the challenge, I picked Memoirs of a Geisha since I think half the people I knew had read it and recommended it. I enjoyed it, but I can't say that much of it stayed with me. Some of the other books that I read for that challenge have.
For Europe, I read The Siege, by Helen Dunmore. Set in what was then Leningrad in the Soviet Union during the first winter of the city's besiegement by the Germans during World War II, this is a beautifully written story of physical and emotional survival and endurance. It is sometimes harrowing, but the writing flawless, and the theme is lightened by the love and beauty the characters find, even in such circumstances.
Another difficult but rewarding read was my choice for Africa, Half of a Yellow Sun, by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. What an excellent writer she is! Five memorable characters in 1960s Nigeria discover which are the ties that bind - or don't. Ties of family, ethnicity, politics, love, country, class - all of these come into play. This is one of my "desert island" books.
One of the best things about this challenge was discovering writers who were new to me. For Australia/Oceania, I was introduced to a wonderful writer, well-known to Australians, Tim Winton, author of Cloudstreet. This saga is about two very different working-class families who live in a huge, old house called Cloudstreet in Perth and covers 20 years of joy, tragedy, marriage, birth, and death. The writing is both earthy and spiritual (and there's a bit of magical realism involved). Heartwarming and heartbreaking and highly recommended.
My North American stop involved another new-to-me writer, Julia Alvarez, author of In the Time of the Butterflies. This is a fictionalized story of the Mirabal sisters, four sisters who opposed the corrupt and murderous dictator of the Dominican Republic, Rafael Trujillo, in the 1950s. The story is told in flashbacks with alternating points of view so that we come to know each of the sisters as individuals with virtues and flaws, and the reader sees how each came to find herself resisting the Trujillo regime. Anyone who wants to read about strong, female characters will appreciate this novel.
For South America, I chose a non-fiction book, Fordlandia, The Rise and Fall of Henry Ford's Forgotten Jungle City, by Greg Grandin. This is one of those forgotten history stories, that of a rather bizarre attempt to build Ford's vision of a small American town in the middle of the Amazon. Fordlandia, as the town was called, was supposed to be the headquarters of a rubber plantation (tires for all those model Ts!). If you're thinking that plunking a mid-western industrial plant and town in the jungle and expecting success isn't going to go well, you're right. It turns into a fascinating and at times funny story of man vs. nature. Spoiler alert: nature will always win.
My "reader's choice" and final stop was back in Asia: A Fine Balance, by Rohinton Mistry. Set in India during the government-declared State of Emergency in 1975, it tells of four people in an unnamed city (speculation is that the author had Mumbai in mind): a shrewd widow, a naive student, and two tailors from a small village, all of whom live in the widow's apartment. The novelist has been compared to Dickens, and I think that's right in his scope and in his empathy for so many different characters in all kinds of situations. This one really stayed with me; I can remember scenes from it as though I read it last week. Wonderful.
So there we are: around the world in 7 books! As always, thanks to Books are My Favourite and Best for the Six Degrees meme.
One of the joys of reading is the ability to be an armchair traveler: to go any place, any time, to meet anyone. What are your favorite armchair travel books?
