The Cue Card

I’m a big fan of author Tim Winton’s books, having read “Dirt Music” (2001), “The Turning” (2005) and “Breath” (2008), but his new one “Eyrie” tested me a bit and I wasn’t sure if it was ever going to get off the ground.

It’s a story about Tom Keely, 49, a disillusioned environmentalist who lives in a downtrodden high-rise building overlooking the harbor of Fremantle, Australia. He’s divorced and been disgraced in some incident that’s forced him out of his job as spokesman for an activist group. It’s a bit sketchy what’s happened but suffice is to say he used to be on the TV news and was a prominent somebody but now he’s unemployed and his wife is gone. Meanwhile his sister and mother worry about him since Tom spends his days in a drug and alcohol haze, looking back on his life, angry at the world and becoming more broke by the minute. He’s also prone to sleepwalking, feinting spells and often doesn’t remember these episodes.

But eventually Tom runs into a neighbor from his childhood days who incidentally is living in his building. Gemma was the beauty from back then whose Tom’s parents generously gave refuge to, but she’s 44 now and taking care of her six-year-old grandson, Kai, because her druggy daughter is in prison. Tom forms a bond with them, helping Gemma on her work nights by watching Kai who’s a strange, shy, intelligent boy who worries Tom with his dreams about death.

But it’s when Kai’s meth-addicted father starts blackmailing Gemma for money and threatening Kai that things turn dicey. Tom is pressed into action that he hasn’t been capable of in eons. But whether they’ll be safe from the meth-punk, you won’t know till the very end.

“Eyrie” paints a vivid picture of disillusionment and place, the past and the present: the high-rise and the harbor in Fremantle, Tom’s childhood and current unwell state. But the story’s plot doesn’t seem to pick up until after page 200. For awhile, I wasn’t sure anything was going to happen in it. At the beginning it was just Tom going in and out of his apartment, drifting off to sleep, or listening to the building’s noises. I couldn’t take it much longer. So I was thankful for Gemma and Kai’s appearance and the novel’s last 100 pages when things indeed speed up.

Thank goodness. The second half with the meth-blackmailer dad are pretty gripping. Although the characters aren’t that likable, particularly the foul-mouthful Gemma who isn’t very grateful to Tom, I was into it by then and wasn’t sure how or if they’d escape. The ending turned out to be pretty abrupt (I had to read it over a few times), but it seemed real.

Judging from comments on Goodreads etc., other readers were either big fans of “Eyrie” or were really disappointed in it. Funny how that happens, such a wide dichotomy. I’d say I didn’t care much for the first half and liked it more in the second half. But overall, I didn’t think it his best book. From those I’ve read, I liked his books “Breath” and “The Turning” better. I’ll still read whatever he writes next. I haven’t read his 1991 novel “Cloudstreet” yet, which many say is his finest. I’m excited though that Tim Winton’s coming to our town’s book festival in October. Wow, now that’ll be good. I’ll have to get him to sign all my copies of his books.

How about you — have you read this author before or do you plan to?

Thomas Wolfe once wrote that you can’t go home again. I know what he means, but part of me says why the heck not. This week I’ve been back visiting my folks and roots again (see photo above), which I always really enjoy. I grew up in Southern, California, but my adult, married life is in Canada now, a world away. In between, I spent years in Texas, Colorado, Washington state, Virginia and D.C. All these places were great, but there’s so many memories in one’s hometown; is there not? I feel younger, and healthy here, too. What about you — do you still enjoy going back to your hometown? This week I intend to finish Kate Morton’s thick-ish novel “The Forgotten Garden” on the plane back tomorrow as I have no time to waste with piles to read. I read her book for my book club, which we’ll discuss on Tuesday. It’s sort of a light, summer read but quite enjoyable nonetheless as Morton spins an engaging tale about family secrets.

Meanwhile, I picked up two used, nonfiction books on sale here that look devourable. First, the 2010 biography of “Cleopatra” by Stacy Schiff, which I’ve wanted to read since going through a Rome phase sparked off by our trip there last fall. That was followed up by the “Rome” TV series from 2005 and 2007, which we spent the winter watching on DVD. Who doesn’t want to know more about Antony and the mysterious Cleopatra? Yes, count me in.

I also got J.R. Moehringer’s 2005 memoir “The Tender Bar,” which I’ve heard raves about for years. It seems a juicy read. Someone wrote he’s the “best memoirist of his kind since Mary Karr.” Hmm. Is this true? Have you read “The Tender Bar”? I recall Mary Karr’s “The Liars’ Club” being bleak but I’m hoping “The Tender Bar” is sweet and a bit funny, too. We’ll see. Until next time, happy reading.

This was my first time reading Lois Lowry’s 1993 award-winning, young adult novel “The Giver.” It’s a slim book, which is coming out as a movie in August, starring Jeff Bridges, Meryl Streep, Katie Holmes, and even Taylor Swift among others. I was curious about the book and had to check it out. Perhaps a few of these older novels such as this one and “Ender’s Game,” which have recently been made into movies, are trying to follow-up on the coattails of the young-adult movie audiences for “The Hunger Games” and “Divergent.” The young-adult medium is sure the rage these days, though perhaps it’s always been pretty popular.

The movie trailer of “The Giver” appears to expand on the book and take some liberties with it. It gives off a sort of “Handmaid’s Tale” creepiness, too. And like that novel, and “Brave New World,” “The Giver” takes place in a utopian society in the future where things are tightly controlled, restricted, and not at all what they seem.

The community in “The Giver” has taken away hunger, war, suffering, unemployment, and sickness but has also eliminated color, music, and love. A selected handful of “Elders” control whom people marry, which children and jobs they get, and when they will be “released.” Choice has been restricted, and life follows a “Sameness” plan, where even people’s capacity for memories is eliminated and borne instead by a “Receiver of Memories.” He alone knows the past, but is now an old man who is called upon to train a successor.

Jonas is the eleven-year-old boy selected to be the next “Receiver of Memories.” But as he trains with the old man (the Giver) he comes to realize from the past the possibilities of what life once was. He’s able for the first time to see color and feel warmth, and becomes disillusioned with his family and the community for how it is. Ultimately it’s when he discovers a hidden chilling truth about what’s going on, that he decides to hatch a plot to change the “Sameness” and escape the community’s pain-free, sterile world.

It’s an interesting little book, which spookiness has stayed with me for awhile after. It’s not that “The Giver” necessarily blew me away with its storytelling or its message but its cautionary tale of such a colorless society is simply and straightforwardly told, and I followed Jonas eagerly to the depths of his journey of discovery. I’ll be looking forward to see how the filmmakers handle this utopian-turned-dystopian tale. Judging by the old man (the Giver) on the book’s cover, I haven’t exactly been able to picture Jeff Bridges as him, but we will see. As long as the movie captures some of the book’s eeriness and forewarning, it might just work.

What about you — have you read this Newbery Medal winner? And what did you think? Do you plan to see the movie?

I feel a bit fortunate for a few reasons to have come across Eric Lomax’s WWII memoir “The Railway Man,” which was an education of sorts to me. In it he describes his experiences as one of thousands of prisoners-of-war who was forced to work on the ghastly Thailand to Burma railway, which was known as the Railway of Death because so many thousands perished working to build it.

Apparently some of “The Railway Man” was written after Lomax returned from the war and the rest was finished decades later. It was first published in 1995 and though it won a couple of awards in the U.K., I had not heard of it until this year when the movie of it starring Colin Firth and Nicole Kidman was scheduled to be released. The movie’s distribution was limited so I haven’t seen it yet, but from the trailer I’ve seen, it seems to take some poetic license and depart from the book in a few ways.

It’s interesting that Eric Lomax who was Scottish only recently died in October 2012 at age 93 while the film was still in production. His wife though came to its premiere at the Toronto film festival last September and apparently received a standing ovation.

In his book, Lomax describes joining the British army at age 19 in 1939 and eventually being sent to South East Asia where he’s captured by the Japanese army with thousands of others following the surrender of Singapore in 1942. Along with a handful, he’s sent to work in the railway’s workshop repairing machinery for the tracks. But later he and five of the men are swept up after their hidden self-made radio is found and Lomax’s drawn map. He’s interrogated for weeks by Japanese soldiers, beaten up, tortured and confined to imprisonment in squalid conditions.

The scenes of his prisoner-of-war experience are quite vivid, and you get a sense of his inner thoughts about the uncertain, scary situations he endures. I didn’t know about the forced labor on the Burma Railway so the memoir is an eye-opener to that and to the brutal prisoner-of-war camps under the Japanese military.

What’s quite remarkable is that not only does Lomax survive WWII, but many decades later at age 70 he decides to confront his demons about the war, as well as his post-traumatic stress, and his avoidance of seeing Japanese people who he hasn’t faced since 1945. The end of his memoir is a journey into his turnaround, as he seeks professional counseling and falls in love with a woman he meets who becomes his second wife. Eventually with her help, Lomax reaches out to meet one of his torturers during the war who’s still alive in Japan. At first Lomax seeks revenge but soon realizes the man has suffered as well and tried hard to make amends over the many decades. The reconciliation between the two that follows is quite extraordinary some 50+ years later.

It’s a story of humanism, healing and forgiveness in the face of utter brutality that’ll likely stay with me. I plan to follow it up later in the year with the nonfiction award-winning book “Unbroken” by Laura Hillenbrand, which is similar in its setting and topic. My husband has read it and I know it’s quite earth-shattering. The movie of which is coming out at Christmas.

For now, I’ll be glad knowing that Eric Lomax received some peace towards the end of his life. I’ll look for “The Railway Man” movie, though the trailer made me think the memoir would be much more of a love story than it actually turned out. Lomax talks about his wife and remarriage in the book but he doesn’t delve into it as fully perhaps as the Hollywood version. Also in real life, Lomax was considerably older (in his 70s) when he finally returns to Japan to meet his former enemy, who he’s no longer out to harm. Regardless of when it was, he was incredibly brave to do so.

What about you — have you read either of these books or any other prisoner-of-war accounts?

We had a fun time on our bike trip along British Columbia’s Sunshine Coast and Vancouver Island, which ended on Sunday. We had only one day of rain, and enjoyed smooth roads, good company and pretty scenery. If you ever get a chance, bike touring is a great way to see parts of the world. I think I’ve taken at least one multi-day bike adventure each year for the past 15 years now, and it’s always been illuminating and invigorating in some way or another.

I highly recommend it, and you don’t have to be a bike pro to enjoy it either. I am no pro, just a bike riding enthusiast.

On the trip, I finished Kathleen Winter’s 2010 novel “Annabel,” which was discussed at my book club on Tuesday night. It’s another of those excellent reads that I likely wouldn’t have picked on my own. Chalk it up again to a good book club to broaden one’s book horizons. It definitely gets you out of your usual book-selection mold.

“Annabel’s” about an intersex child (born with both male and female genitalia, which is very rare) in 1968 in a small town in remote coastal Labrador. The child’s parents play traditional roles in the town’s hunting culture; the father is a trapper who spends months away in the wilderness and the mother works around the house. The father decides the baby, who undergoes surgery, will be raised as a boy (Wayne), though the mother secretly wishes the child were a daughter (Annabel). The parents don’t tell the child he was born intersex until something happens much later. Eventually Wayne moves away and stops taking his masculinity medications and begins to accept himself as he is.

It’s a novel that explores gender issues and empathizes with seeing beyond male/female-ness to the humanness of a person. It’s a character study into Wayne, his parents, a trusted neighbor, and the culture into how they view and cope with his intersex situation. I was convinced by the realness of the story and the feel of the town in Labrador. His parents surely have their troubles over his ambiguous circumstances but seem to evolve about it with time. I felt for Wayne and just thought he would’ve acted out more sometimes against the circumstances. He seems so calm in the face of the inner and outer turmoil when at times I felt like it might have been good to scream or throw something off a cliff or fight back against a bully.

It’s a very well-written book though and I felt like I was right there in the characters’ shoes so to speak, as they all go through a transformation of sorts. No wonder it was on the short list for both the Orange and Giller prizes. I definitely will look for the author’s next book once it comes out.

Meanwhile, I’ve picked up “The Railway Man” by Eric Lomax about his life during World War II when he was captured by the Japanese Army and forced to work on the Burma-Siam railway. Lomax died in 2012, but his story is now out as a movie with Colin Firth and Nicole Kidman. I plan to see it once I finish the book.

What about you — have you heard or read either of these books? Or what are you keen on reading these days?