Alexander, Shana.The Astonishing Elephant.

Shana Alexander’s book was a good complement to Barbara Gowdy’s The White Bone. Alexander is a journalist whose love of elephants started when she covered the first elephant birth in captivity at the Portland, Oregon zoo in 1962. Since then she has followed elephant facts around the globe, culminating in this book. Where Gowdy’s book takes your imagination by the hand, The Astonishing Elephant rounds out your knowledge. It gives a history of elephants in myth and religion. It describes how elephants are as unique in comparison to the animal kingdom as humans are; female elephants have only two mammary glands, and elephant calves, like humans, are born without the knowledge of how to feed themselves. Their behaviour must be learned. Alexander chronicles the sad and sometimes touching history of elephants in circuses and zoos. And she bravely documents elephant violence, usually provoked, something that elephant lovers are apparently loathe to do because of possible repercussions to elephants. The book ends with chapters on elephant viability; what do they need to survive? It focuses on habitat and reproduction. It’s not clear whether humans will be able to preserve enough habitat to ensure natural breeding, but Disney’s Animal Kingdom in Florida, a 500-acre safari-style sanctuary funded by its entertainment value to the public seems one viable option. And since elephant gestation is 22 months, artificial insemination seems a hopeful but uncertain alternative. It may be too late, but much knowledge about elephants has been gained that may help. Alexander writes in a warm style, clearly motivated by affection and many of the elephant “specialists” she interviews show that same devotion. I would have liked to read more about what motivates people to dedicate their lives towards not only elephant survival, but a better quality of life. The Astonishing Elephant has helped me understand my own fascination more deeply, and I’m grateful for it. (respond to Linda)

Chesterton, G. K. The Man Who Was Thursday.

I wanted to read this book because Frederick Buechner in Speak What We Feel describes The Man Who Was Thursday as a novel that risks telling the truth in ways that few novels do. Buechner devotes a chapter to exploring the life of Chesterton and the ways that this novel helped the author reconcile the pain of disillusionment and find faith.
Part of the novel's appeal is its quirkiness. It reads like a dream sequence, jumping from city basements to wide open fields, from a snowscape to a hot summer's day. It is about a secret society, a mysterious leader named Sunday, and a man's search for truth. (respond to Lorna)

Chevalier, Tracy. Girl With A Pearl Earring.

This is a story about a girl in a 17th century painting by Johannes Vermeer. Vermeer painted only 35 paintings in his short life (died at 43). “Girl” is unique; it is a close-up where all other portraits are full. It has a black background where the others have detail, and the girl’s expression jumps out of the canvas where the others look more staid, conventional or mask-like. Tracy Chevalier writes a remarkable interpretation of this portrait, giving a plausible account of how it may have come to exist. This story is also a slice into 17th century Dutch life, both in the peasant class and the bourgeoisie.

The story is carried by the unique sensibility of Griet, a peasant girl hired to clean Vermeer’s studio. Griet’s perception of life and her sense of herself raise her up out of her lower-class anonymity. Her understanding of light and colour are fascinating and also tragic because she can never be a painter or even a painter’s assistant because of a rigid class system. The growing intimacy between her and Vermeer, while remaining chaste, is still full of passion and a shared vision of beauty. Chevalier captures in her unfolding characterization the same ambiguity that the painting reveals. You can’t help thinking, when looking at the painting, that the girl was special to the painter and that she was drawn to him.
The tension of the story is how Griet will respond to her growing feelings for her master and the compromising position he puts her in by recognizing her ability. It’s also a struggle for her to remain true to herself and not be swallowed either by the painter’s egotism or the drudgery of peasant life. Griet echoes the values of humanism as the individual’s intrinsic worth, even though she is severely limited by a class-bound affluent society. This is a very enjoyable read for anyone interested in art and history. (respond to Linda)

Haught, John F. God After Darwin: A Theology of
Evolution.

After Brian Swimme’s The Canticle of the Cosmos and PBS’ Evolution series, this was a great book to cap off our summer cosmology course. Haught’s title is taken from how some people have described the theory of evolution: Darwin’s dangerous idea. Once we saw that nature, not the supernatural divine, was responsible for life, could faith in God survive? Haught doesn’t shy away from the thorny questions that evolution poses to theology. Instead of hiding from science, Haught allows science to deepen the theological questions and to maintain an integrity of intellect within belief. He explores both the atheist and intelligent design options and finds them both importing unconscious assumptions, making the data fit the theory. Haught sees how both evolution’s novelty and brutality are akin to God’s self-emptying nature, especially as exemplified in Christ’s suffering love. This Christic motif allows theology to find meaning in what science uncovers, without hobbling either. I was drawn to Haught’s courage to allow his image of God to be transformed by knowledge of the world. His metaphor of novelty entering evolution as the future reminds me of Jurgen Moltmann’s idea that the future is the source of our hope. Very intelligently written, this is an engaging, thought-provoking book for anyone who wants to explore the relationship between science and faith more deeply. (respond to Linda)

Lewis, Bernard. The Crisis of Islam: Holy War and Unholy Terror.

In light of September 11, the war on terror and an apparently biased media, it’s pretty confusing for the average person to make sense out of the what’s happening in the Middle East right now. I wanted to get past the sound bytes and Lewis’ book was very helpful. Aimed at a Western audience, Lewis, a leading Arab scholar, explores how history and politics combine with Islam to form the antagonism towards the West that is prevalent today. Beginning with conquest in the 9th century C.E., Muslims have a proud heritage and history of tolerance towards conquered peoples. With the Crusades and then colonialism they have steadily lost land and a sense of sovereignty. With independence, many Muslim countries suffered under corrupt leaders who tried to play the West against its enemies at the expense of their own people. The West usually turned a blind eye because it suited their economic policies. Meanwhile, Islamic law lays groundwork for living a life in the presence of God. Muslims are among the poorest people of the world; their faith endows them with dignity but is also often militant. Combine that with a justified perception that they have been used and overlooked by Western leaders, which they experience as hypocrisy.

The Wahabi interpretation of Islam is one of the most fundamentalist. They reject any layers of tradition, opting for a purist’s literal reading. Education of women is considered a Western contamination. Wahabism originated in Saudi Arabia, one of the few countries that can finance Muslim schools all over the world. It is the least tolerant version of Islam, intent on preserving their own interpretation, not in dialogue with the tradition. This seems to be the version of Islam that is taught in many schools.

Lewis gives a sympathetic reading to the Muslim list of complaints, but also reveals the contradictions in the Islamic responses of resentment. This is a good introduction into the history of the conflict between Islam and the West. Muslims have been hard done by, especially by their own leaders. Many Muslim countries are in a precarious balance between traditional dictatorship and democracy, which their infrastructure can’t fully support yet. And their religion is understandably suspicious of this Western construct. But they are poised to continue oppressing their own people, if Wahabism holds sway. This definitely got me past the sound bytes. It showed me that understanding and historical empathy are crucial in navigating these issues. (respond to Linda)

Pearl, Matthew. The Dante Club.

I loved reading this book; the suspense, characters and context unfurled like a sunning cat into my imagination. The gruesome murders are Stephen King-creepy, probably much like in Dante’s Inferno. I liked how the mystery invited me further into this history of both the Dante scholars and Dante himself. Mystery is a great way to explore history because both involve interpretation and suspense. We are constantly confronted with what happens and need to figure out what it means. Weaving the scholars’ actual words into the dialogue, Pearl lets them speak for themselves (just as Dante did with the historical figures in his work). The characters emerge as real people with quirks and warts. Oliver Wendell Holmes is a vain man with a gift of intuition. James Russell Lowell is a blustery activist who galvanizes the group’s conscience. Longfellow’s equanimity at times seems quietist and yet he is the group’s Virgil, guiding them through while immersing himself in the poetry. J.T. Fields is the enlightened entrepreneur who sometimes descends into opportunism. As perhaps the first book club in North America, these four actually called themselves The Dante Club and encountered real opposition in the politics of Harvard, which the fictional August Manning articulates so well. Nicholas Rey is a more stoic figure, perhaps more symbol than character. But even so, he gives a stark view into the reality of race relations at that time. The layering of Boston politics, Civil War horrors and racial inequalities all seem to come into focus through Dante’s vision of justice and hope in the pit of hell. And throughout the book, Matthew Pearl raises the question of the role of interpretation and book clubs in literature. Very satisfying read. (respond to Linda)

Click here for review

Richards, David Adams. Mercy Among the Children.

I found this book, set in a poor rural Maritime town, hard to read. It was very bleak, like a grey winter day on the prairies, and with each chapter, just when I thought the plight of the main characters couldn't get worse, it get worse. It begged for mercy.

At the same time, there was something that felt so true about the complexity of the relationships; the pain of their lives became a pain that as a reader you were willing to share.

Lyle is so disappointed by the apparent passivity of his self-educated father Sydney that he decides to become exactly that which his father has chosen against - an abusive, destructive bully. At times Lyle's complaint seems justified, but as we learn about the circumstances of his father's childhood and subsequent deep-felt choices, the nobility of Sydney's life becomes clearer. The small moments of transformation in this novel are not easily won - perhaps this is why they strike us as being so hopeful. (respond to Lorna)

Sawyer, Robert. Hominids/Humans/Hybrids: The Neanderthal Parallax Trilogy.

This trilogy brings together the parallel but completely different worlds of Homo sapiens and Neanderthals. When a quantum-computing experiment goes wrong, physicist Ponter Boddit is transported from his Neanderthal world into what for him is an alien human earth. What follows in the trilogy is a tension of cultures, a questioning of western ways that we assume to be the norm, and the eventual development of relationships. It is fascinating to learn about the Neanderthal world where the values of security and efficiency have formed an advanced culture that seems to have a better relationship with its home earth than do humans.

Although the god image portrayed by Sawyer is limited and thus disappointing, in every other way this trilogy sparks the imagination and is a joy to read. (respond to Lorna)

See also

Seybold, Alice. Lovely Bones.

A 14-year-old girl is raped and murdered, and then becomes the narrator of this story of healing, both for her shattered family and for herself. Author Alice Sebold in Lovely Bones creates a great way for readers to enter this horrific story that we hear too often in the news. And she creates a compelling character in Susie Salmon. It’s hard to imagine this story being told with wit and humour, yet Sebold pulls it off. Never heavy-handed, but with nuances steeped in sensuality and compassion, Susie takes on a journey of observation through family, school, first love, loneliness, depravity and justice without revenge. You get the sense even though Susie is looking on from heaven, she is fixated on earth and is holding back her own development in the new world she finds herself. But thinking of stories of ghosts haunting violent crimes gives plausibility to this. Not only that but Susie's yearning to be back on earth is actually part of the energy that almost destroys her remaining family. Mixing dysfunction with terrible pain, and a haunting, Sebold paints these dynamics realistically and poignantly. The healing that slowly emerges in the story is a testament to love in the here and now, a love that stays with you even as you walk in the shadow of death.

While there is no God mentioned in Susie's heaven, the compassion that suffuses the whole story, both in the characters in heaven and those fumbling fools on earth, gives the strongest hint of faith. Not faith as in belief, but faith as experience of something beyond your ego, that nevertheless approaches you with love. I found myself thinking that Susie is a good teacher for compassion, pointing the way towards being present to everything that happens, even the ugliness we encounter. It’s also a pointer, at least to me, that letting go is such a necessary thing to learn if we are to live life fully. I found that Susie had begun to idealize and perhaps idolize her family. As tragic as a life cut short is, she needed to move on. Of course that is my own life speaking back to me as well. It’s so easy to rank our life as "best of" or "worst times". It’s so easy to hang on to mistakes like a tongue worrying about the gap of a missing tooth. It’s so difficult to open our hands and be open again to the future, and yet only then can we really feel love and beauty. And yet letting go doesn't mean denial or repression either. What we encounter needs to be fully experienced. A phrase in the novel's heaven comes up a lot: "I guess you're ready for that now." The pace of grace is the timing that our souls know, even when we don't.

I would recommend this novel for anyone who likes character stories, or even as a fictional meditation on compassion.

(respond to Linda)

Stuemer, Diane. The Voyage of the Northern Magic: A Family Odyssey.

After reading a review of this "armchair travel" book in the Winnipeg Free Press, I was hooked. The novel is the true account of a Canadian couple who are successful in worldly accomplishments - they have a business, three children under the age of 12, and a comfortable house in the suburbs. Following a brush with cancer, however, they realized they are not living the big life they dreamed about, so they rented out their house, sold their business and made preparations to circumnavigate the world in a sailboat, despite the fact that their sailing experience was very limited. The book chronicles their adventures aboard the Northern Magic, the name their boat was christened with. Their trip took them four years during which they made many friends and became impassioned about helping people and situations less fortunate than they. It led to a lifelong commitment to humanitarian work. Diane wrote humourous and meaningful weekly columns for the Ottawa Citizen, and thousands of people followed the family's progress.

I loved the book on many levels. The author is a very engaging writer. The page-turning adventures (some leaving me feeling sea-sick) combined with the love of life that the family had made it heart-warming. I often felt I was actually on the boat with them. Their growing awareness of situations like the destruction of the Borneo rainforest and the adversities of the people they encountered made it an inspiration and a window on the world
.
The book is about living your dreams, of not settling for mediocrity and half-life. It makes you believe that no matter what your dream is, it is not only possible, but imperative to reach towards it.

After the book was done, I continued to read about the Stuemer family on their website (northernmagic.com) and learn about the causes they now support as a full-time job. When I learned that two years after their trip ended, Diane Stuemer succumbed to cancer, I felt as though I had lost a friend. This is the mark of a great book, that you feel changed after reading it, and also carry the people in your heart as if they are a part of your family. I would recommend this book highly.

(respond to Lydia)