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Sunday, July 30, 2017

The Zookeeper's Wife: a DVD

The Zookeeper's Wife is beautifully shot and acted. Director, Niki Caro, used real animals and real cages rather than CGI. The rapport between Antonina (Jessica Chastain) and the animals is genuine. This in itself must have been incredibly hard to film.

The story arc is beautiful; In the beginning, Antonina wishes to save only one Jewish friend, Magda. The risks are incredible to take in even one. Nazi troops patrols the zoo in the mornings and afternoons.

Antonina and her husband rescue 300 Jews from certain death in tunnels under her zoo. She maintains a friendship with one of Hitler's most trusted men, Lutz Heck, and devises an ingenious plan. 

Chastain portrays the character's duality-- her intensity and equanimity--in such a unique way.  

























Thursday, July 27, 2017

Awesome beginnings

"The snow had been falling for three days above six thousand feet, but it has been gentle and hte lines stayed up. At this point in the season, after a long Montana winter that showed no sings of breaking, Sabrina Baldwin considered this a gift...Then, on the fourth day, the wind rose. And the lights blinked."  

Rise the Dark, Michael Koyta.

Tuesday, July 25, 2017

The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins

When this novel came out a few years ago I remember it was a juggernaut. Every book review in every professional library journal was effusive. 

Some compared it to Alfred Hitchcock's Rear Window, where an ordinary person happens to see a crime. In this case, Rachel is a bit of voyeur who witnesses an act of infidelity.

On her commuter train, she sees a couple whose perfect life she romanticizes. She has recently divorced from her own "perfect" husband. The couple whom she names Jess and Jason becomes her ideal until she witnesses something disturbing. 

She comes forward to the police to report what she knows. Sgt. Riley thinks she is a bit of kook. No one takes Rachel  seriously because she is an unreliable witness. Rachel has had an alcohol problem even before Tom left her for another woman. Since then, its only gotten worst. 

Hawkins gives us the situation and then alternates between many characters' point of view--a difficult juggling act. What is amazing is that none of the tension is lost as she moves from character to character. She withholds just enough to keep the pacing taut and suspenseful.

Psychological fiction and unreliable narrators are hot right now; there are many read-alikes to choose from. This one happens to be one of the best. 

Monday, July 17, 2017

The Plum Tree by Ellen Marie Wiseman

World War II-era fiction is popular right now but what makes this debut different is that it  portrays an ordinary German family. The incidents were inspired by the author's own family. Wiseman's mother's family lived in Germany during the war. 

The story is centered around Christine and her desire to protect her family and her boyfriend who is Jewish.

The Plum Tree is about longing, loyalty, and incredible bravery of the people who fought injustice. 

For a time, resistance was simply leaving hard-boiled eggs in places where the Jewish prisoners could find them. 

Eventually, Christine hides Isaac in the family attic. Once he is discovered, though, both are sent to Dachau.

She receives one of the better jobs and works for one of the better captors. Even so, her stay in Dachau nearly kills her. 

Wiseman explains in an afterward which historical details were altered to fit the story.



Wednesday, July 12, 2017

A Review of Blackout: Remembering the Things I Drank to Forget by Sarah Hepola

Reading memoirs is cathartic. They offer tiny glimpses into someone else's life. Sometimes they make a reader breathe a sign of relief.

Hepola, who was a writer before and after becoming sober, also found stories cathartic. She would often read about addicts with relief that she "wasn't that bad."

Eventually, however, it did become "that bad." One particularly bad episode in Paris, when Hepola was starting out as a journalist, left her mortified for years. She woke up in a stranger's room with no idea how she had gotten there.


Hepola, who had her first blackout at twelve, continued to drink in high school. Attending University of Texas at Austin, Hepola was caught in a downward spiral.

She describes the unnerving feeling of whole chunks of her life disappearing as if they were "scooped...by a melon baller." 

Hepola drank to ease her anxieties about her weight and her social status in school:


I needed alcohol to drink away the things that plagued me. Not just my doubts about sex – my self-consciousness, my loneliness, my insecurities, my fears.

Later, she drank because she thought it helped her writing. After college she wrote for the entertainment section of an Austin, Texas newspaper. 

After re-evaluating her life, Sarah embarks upon a painful journey of sobriety.

We've heard this story told many times, in many different forms, but never told so well.


Blackout: Remembering the Things I Drank to Forget was a New York Times bestseller.  



Similar stories about addiction:
  
Jacobsen, Lea. Bar Flower
Laing, Olivia. The Trip to Echo Spring.
Vargas, Elizabeth. Between Breaths: a Memoir of Panic and Addiction. 

More memoirs:
Parravani, Christa. Her: A Memoir.
Cahalan, Susan. My Brain on Fire.  
Mcbride, Regina. Ghost Songs: A Memoir.

Tuesday, July 11, 2017

Hugo: A Look Back

Hugo was released six years ago. Since then its lost none of its charm. 

Hugo is a well-shot and well-acted movie that also happens to have a beautiful message.

I first became aware of the book which I always meant to read. The book is a marvelously illustrated and written by Brian Selznick.

Wonderful moments abound in this film, like Hugo hanging on to the arms of enormous clock. The scene looks like something out of the silent film Safety Last. The film honors silent films and silent film makers so this scene is so fitting.

One of the best aspects of the movie, however, is the theme.

Standing near the clear dial of the clock, which is an enormous window, Hugo realizes that the world is like an enormous machine.

If someone has lost their purpose, they are broken, just like the automaton Hugo's father found. Yet, that doesn't mean they can't be "fixed" or redeemed. 

"Are you a fixer?" Isabelle asks Hugo. Humbly, he says, "I think so."

The villain of the story and the movie has a prosthetic leg, which he needs because of a war injury.

The war has left him embittered; plus, he has had a terrible childhood. Consequently, he delights in locking up and terrorizing orphaned children.

Even this character though is "fixed," in the end, as he returns with a working leg, presumably fixed by Hugo and Papa Georges.


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