Mr. Kafka

Mr. Kafka and Other Tales from the Time of the Cult
by Bohumil Hrabal
translated by Paul Wilson
Recommended Ages: 15+

A friend loaned me this book of stories translated from Czech. I guess he sensed our shared interest in music of Stalinist-era Russian composers would likewise translate into an interest in stories written by an author (1914-97) who lived through what he called "the time of the cult of personality" - the cult, that is, of Stalin. First published between the late 1940s and the mid-1950s, when the rave for Soviet-style communism in Czechoslovakia rose to its crest and went into descent, it reached its final form in a 1965 reprint titled Want-ad for a House I No Longer Wish to Live in, which restored the bits previously censored out. In Canadian translator Paul Wilson's rendering, it reads like an interconnected series of prose poems, with astonishing flashes of lyricism alternating with long inventories of mundane items, passages of disturbing and depressing narrative, crackling fusillades of irony, and what seems to be word-for-word records of conversations the author may have observed as he did forced volunteer labor at a scrap-metal recycling mill.

Parts of the book seem, in fact, to be a kind of love-letter to a female personification of the Poldi mill which, Wilson's afterword explains, had a woman's silhouette in its corporate logo. In interlarded vignettes it introduces us to such quirky characters as a judge, a dairyman, a priest, a cop, a sergeant major, and others who have been uprooted from their pre-revolution lives and sent to labor in the mines or the mills. There is a communist true-believer who has trouble accepting the disjoin between his ideals and their application in reality. There is a guard overseeing a group of female convicts who fancies himself their guardian angel. There is a sociopathic fireman so captivated by his own spiffiness that he commits casual rape and gloats over the gruesome death of a child.

Meanwhile, in stories set outside the Poldi yard, we meet a fevered artist who all but kills himself to produce a piece of patriotic art that proves unwanted; a stonemason who actually considers killing himself while watching attempts to demolish a statue of Stalin, to whose cult he is still devoted; an auxiliary policeman who considers it his duty to arrest people who jump off moving streetcars; a terrifying, dictatorial theater ticket-taker who experiences a religious conversion while watching a musical duel between a dance-hall band and a symphony orchestra; and, in two framing stories, including the one that lent its title to the collection, a surrealistic, stream-of-consciousness narrative of a fellow whose minute observation of everything going on around him, from the streets of Prague to the Poldi millyard, teeters on a thin wire between romantic rhapsody and insane babbling.

This book shows Hrabal to be the kind of writer who can make a stenographic record of all that he sees and hears glow with a weird beauty - even while allowing the reader to feel the grip of horror at what he, and everyone near him at that time, had to go through. I think it would be an instructive book for many Americans today, when another movement is afoot to tinker with society in ways that could produce similarly weird and horrible results. If only we also had creative minds among us who were prepared to transmute the experiences to come into beauty. We might begin to get them by sharing and enjoying this fascinating book.

The Teacher's Funeral

The Teacher's Funeral: A Comedy in Three Parts
by Richard Peck
Recommended Ages: 10+

You're not supposed to laugh at the news of someone's death, but in 1904 rural Indiana, the news comes to 15-year-old Russell Culver wrapped in a practical joke that did make me laugh. Indeed, so many things made me laugh in this book that pauses to catch my breath probably accounted for one-third of the time I spent reading it. It is the story of a boy's coming of age in a one-room country school where his bossy older sister is (suddenly) the teacher, told by an expert humorist with an ear for country speech and an eye for colorful detail. It has romance, tragedy, a bit of social satire, and a lot of historical detail about what it was like to grow up in an era (and an area) where schoolchildren didn't put shoes on, except for funerals, until there was frost on the ground. It is a completely convincing memoir of a member of its author's grandparents' generation, while at the same time dishing up non-stop laughs until your sides hurt.

The story covers only the fall semester of the school year in which Russell's sister Tansy takes over teaching at the Hominy Ridge School, with a student population of eight, ranging from a six-year-old girl nicknamed "Little Britches" to a blue-jawed, 20-ish fellow who has yet to learn his ABCs. It includes a scatter-brained boy known as "Flopears," a younger sibling whose specialty is making himself invisible, a teenage girl with a difficult attitude, a preacher's son described as "If brains were dynamite he couldn't blow his nose," and the practical-joke-pulling, pratfall-prone Russell himself, who just wants to run away to the wheat fields of South Dakota and be done with school forever.

I got a special charge out of reading this story, set in the county adjacent to one where I used to live and making references to places I know and love - though I didn't know them the way the people of 1904 knew them, when the first automobile accident on record involved a horse-drawn spring wagon, and the biggest social event of the year was hog slaughtering. I'm sure my dear friends in Terre Haute would get a kick out of this story, in which Indianapolis is described as "out east" and the idea of a vehicle traveling from Evansville to Montezuma, Ind., in one day comes as a shock to the mind.

It might be for that reason I felt included in the sense of nostalgia this story generates. But who of us is really that many generations away from a place with dirt roads and daily farm chores to be done? My grandparents were still living such a life, to some extent, when I was a little boy. I think a lot of readers, especially in the midwestern U.S., can remember hearing stories, if not experiencing firsthand, a slightly more modernized version of this story in which sheet-steel-sided threshing machines were the latest innovation, apt to draw a crowd. While there are still older people telling stories like this, that feeling of nostalgia will still be personal to many of us. And when such people are no more, their historical importance will be even greater.

Richard Peck won a Newbery Medal for A Year Down Yonder, the middle installment of his "Granny Dowdel" trilogy. His other books include the Blossom Culp quartet, Secrets at Sea and its sequel The Mouse with the Question Mark Tail, The Last Safe Place on Earth, Here Lies the Librarian, and many more.

The First Two Lives of Lukas-Kasha

The First Two Lives of Lukas-Kasha
by Lloyd Alexander
Recommended Ages: 10+

This was, I believe, the first book I ever read by the author of the wonderful Prydain Chronicles and so many other favorite books. It was when I was a child myself, and not just a grown-up specializing in book reviews of children's books. Coming back to it after so many years, I remembered only a little about it, apart from the exotic impression it left behind. And now having re-read it, I am understandably struck by a sense of the familiar - but surprisingly, not because I can remember the experience of reading it before, but because I can smell its kinship to the Prydain Chronicles. Alexander was inspired by Persian folklore in this instance, and by Welsh in the other; but some of the ideas cross over, such as a questing trio being composed of an unlikely hero, a tough-minded princess, and a comical bard-type character (a versifier in one case, a minstrel in the other). Perhaps the obvious similarities stop there. But it is equally evident that both tales - whether a five-book arc or this stand-alone book - spring from the imagination of a master storyteller with one ear tuned to the patterns and inflections of ancient legends, and the other to the hearts and funny-bones of today's children.

Lukas, who sometimes gives his name as Kasha, enjoys his position the official town ne'er-do-well of the village of Zara-Petra - swindling a merchant here, playing tricks on the mayor there - until the day a traveling conjurer summons him from the crowd to assist him in a spectacular trick. As soon as the magician dunks Lukas' head in a pot of water, the young man finds himself splashing in the ocean off a strange coast. Almost immediately he is discovered by the ministers of the kingdom of Abadan - I know, he's never heard of it either - and hailed as its new king, who was prophesied to rise from the sea.

At first, Lukas enjoys his part in the magic trick, losing himself in a life of pleasure such as only the figurehead ruler of a powerful, Central Asian country can afford. But then he realizes his administrators hold all the real power, and they are using it for cruel purposes. He starts to study how to be a better king and how to make better laws. He tries to think of a way to stop the war brewing between his country and the mountain people of the north. He saves a versifier from being impaled on a spear for writing rude verses about him and his Grand Vizier. He soon becomes such a thorn in the side of his counselors that they begin plotting to assassinate him.

Suddenly Lukas is a king on the run from his own government. He still wants to try to stop the war Shugdad, the Grand Vizier, is determined to wage with neighboring Bishangar. But it is all he can do to keep himself and his companions out of the clutches of robbers, enemy soldiers, and his own army, which is just as dangerous. Meanwhile, he tries to teach a hard-bitten Bishangari girl there are ways to get things done without dying or killing, and ultimately he uses his experience as a ne'er-do-well to do very well indeed.

There is nothing I can say about the story's ending that wouldn't be an unforgivable spoiler. Just expect it to be marvelous, magical, bittersweet, and wide open for your imagination to play in. Then be sure not to miss some of Alexander's other stories set in exotic climes: The Remarkable Journey of Prince Jen; The Fortune-Tellers; The Arkadians; The Iron Ring; The Rope Trick; and The Golden Dream of Carlo Chuchio. I myself have yet to taste only a few of these well-seasoned dishes. But Lloyd Alexander has never disappointed me yet.

The Young Merlin Trilogy

The Young Merlin Trilogy
by Jane Yolen
Recommended Ages: 11+

In this tightly-structured children's re-imagining of the legends of Merlin, a wild boy abandoned in the woods at age 8 learns to survive like an animal. Then, taken under the wing of a kind falconer named Master Robin, he finds his true name and learns to be human again. But a new tragedy sends him out into the world alone, equipped with little more than a growing awareness of his own strange powers, starting with dreams that come true, if only "on the slant."

Merlin has brushes with deadly danger, including a scoundrel who wants to sell him as a slave. He takes refuge with a traveling conjurer named Ambrosius, prophesies the downfall of a certain Duke Vortigern, gets thrown in with the wild folk of the woods, witnesses a terrible massacre by the forces of Uther Pendragon, and befriends a younger boy who will one day be King Arthur - all before the age of 12.

Jane Yolen, an extremely prolific writer of children's books, a noted authority on folklore, and the author of yet other books about Arthur and Merlin (The Sword of the Rightful King, for example), pieced together fragments of the confused body of Merlin lore in a way no other author has done - though, to be sure, two interpreters of this ancient legend seldom agree on much more than the starkest outline. This rather short book is a blend of the familiar and the strange, or rather a strange blend of familiar elements, packaged in the form of three very, very short books titled Passager, Hobby, and Merlin, which separately deliver such tiny bites of Merlin's story that they really only seem complete when bound together in one volume. Indeed, that is how I read them, and how I recommend reading them.

There is a sense of ritual in the prologues and epilogues that bind the parts of this trilogy together. There is also a disturbing sense of darkness running beneath the surface of these stories, calling for the most mature and subtle readers in the "Ages 8 to 12" audience to whom the trilogy is marketed. Youngsters impressed by Yolen's knack for talking to them on their own level, without underestimating their abilities, might want to check out this list of some 200 other books to her credit. They include Wizard's Hall, a pre-Harry Potter school-of-magic adventure; Armageddon Summer, a novel co-written with Bruce Coville about two teens in the middle of standoff between a millennialist cult and the FBI; the "Young Heroes" quartet, co-authored with Robert J. Harris and based on ancient Greek legends; and the "Seelie Wars" series, co-authored with Adam Stemple, about the realms of faerie. Space does not permit even to list all the types of stories she has written. Go find about them for yourself!

Mariah Mundi

Mariah Mundi: The Midas Box
by G.P. Taylor
Recommended Ages: 13+

In stark contrast to Harry Potter, we first meet orphan Mariah Mundi about to board the train away from the boarding school that he is leaving forever, to a job as a stage magician's assistant in a ritzy hotel. Before he even gets on the train, though, he is swept into an adventure littered with magical artifacts, dangerous creatures, sinister devices, chases through the sewers of a seaside village, and secret passages deep in the foundations of the steampunk Prince Regent hotel. It is a mystery involving jewel smuggling, murder, kidnapping, sorcery, the plundering of shipwrecks, a deck of cards that can tell the future, and a box that can turn anything placed in it to solid gold. It features monsters with snapping pincers, tentacles, fangs, and claws, as well as characters with such flamboyant names as Isambard Black, Perfidious Albion, and the shopkeeper Quadlibett.

I did make it all the way through this book, and enjoyed some of its weird goings-on. It had a surprise on every page, which is one of the things that made it hard going for me. At times I felt I was missing something. I couldn't quite get my head around the shape of the story. It seemed always to elude my grasp, from chapter titles that in some cases didn't make any sense to new principal characters being introduced after I thought all the pieces were in play. Leading characters' motivations seemed to change drastically within the duration of a single scene, and the point-of-view character is revealed at the end to have been keeping a big secret from us all along. But mostly, I was just kept wrong-footed by the sense that the story was running from oddity to oddity with only the sketchiest notion of an overall design.

The charm of the book, on the other hand, lies in its invention of strange scenery, dangerous and magical incidents, and Mariah's emergence toward the end as a key actor in the events rather than a confused spectator. The setting is captivating, and the characters are memorable, and the fate of a certain Kraken is even downright touching. I did get some of the references concealed in the names of people and places (such as the Trisagion Bar and the Great Bizmillah). Once it is finally revealed who the good guys and bad guys really are, there seems to be some promise for an entertaining series of sequels. But given my overriding impression that the whole concept was moving a bit too fast for my slow intellect, I wasn't surprised to learn that a movie adapted from this book was a commercial and critical failure. Like the labyrinth in the roots of the Prince Regent, this story has a shape an incautious visitor can get lost in.

This book is the first installment of a trilogy by Graham Peter Taylor, an Anglican vicar who lives in Yorkshire, England. Its sequels are Mariah Mundi and the Ghost Diamonds and Mariah Mundi and the Ship of Fools. Taylor has become very popular for his offbeat brand of fantasy chillers with a touch of Christian allegory, such as Shadowmancer and Wormwood and their sequels, the Doppel Ganger Chronicles and Vampyre Labyrinth trilogies, and the period detective thriller Jack D'Arc.

Briar Rose

Briar Rose
by Jane Yolen
Recommended Ages: 14+

Becca Berlin doesn't realize how little she knew about her grandma, affectionally known as Gemma, until the old lady dies, leaving her a box of mysterious documents and photographs, along with the weight of a promise to get to the bottom of Gemma's claim that she, Gemma, is the real Briar Rose - you know, from the story of Sleeping Beauty.

An investigative reporter for a left-wing newspaper, Becca is the right person for the job. When she follows the current of Gemma's disturbingly unique version of the classic fairy tale, it leads her to a small town in Poland haunted by guilt dating back to Hitler's holocaust, and a heartbreaking story told by an old man who was once imprisoned for being a homosexual.

The truth of what led Gemma to be convinced she was the sleeping princess is moving beyond belief, yet strangely believable. This story of an investigative journalist discovering her own roots in a mass grave near a Nazi extermination camp is about as far from the source material as I reckon a modern update of a fairy tale could get. Yet in a series of just such stories by various authors, of which this book was originally a part, this is by far the most acclaimed and enduring installment. It leaves behind echoes that may disturb your sleep several nights running - such as Gemma's statement that even dead people have a future so long as the living remember them and are moved to take action in memory of them - or the final paragraph of the author's note at the end of the book, in which she makes clear just what parts of it were fiction and which parts were real with a bluntness that left me emotionally overwhelmed.

If the dead indeed live not only in the hearts but also the actions of those who remember them, the lessons our civilization must learn from the holocaust may yet sink in. To ensure that happens, I strongly advise reading this book. If what Gemma says is true, it could change the world in a way that it still needs changing. Also, it's an excellent book, a book to be loved.

Jane Yolen is the very prolific author of the Pit Dragons quartet, the Young Merlin trilogy, the Tartan Magic trilogy, more than 20 "How Do Dinosaurs...?" stories, two Rock 'n' Roll Fairy Tales co-written with her son Adam Stemple, The Wizard of Washington Square, The Devil's Arithmetic, Sword of the Rightful King, A Plague of Unicorns, and many, many more. It's about time I went on a quest to read them all. Her author credits show her to be an authority on fairy tale lore; and this is not her only attempt to write a children's book that does justice to the horrors of the Holocaust. I mentally file her in a special category of great young adult authors such as Diana Wynne Jones, Joan Aiken, and Lloyd Alexander.

Mandy

Mandy
by Julie Andrews Edwards
Recommended Ages: 10+

This now classic children's book explores the confused and painful emotions of a 10-year-old orphan girl who, in spite of the kindness of everyone around her at the orphanage and beyond, becomes overwhelmed by the need to have a home of her own and a loving family around her.

When Mandy discovers a neglected cottage on the vacant manorial estate on the other side of the wall behind her orphanage, she becomes so obsessed with keeping it to herself that she is soon lying, stealing, and antagonizing her best friend. She doesn't understand what is happening inside her heart, but it lies open to the reader as she digs, plants, and trims the garden, sweeps the little cottage, and makes believe the birds and bunnies and deer in the neighborhood are her personal friends. Meanwhile she begins taking more and more daring risks and telling bigger and bigger whoppers.

The turning point comes one stormy night when Mandy becomes dangerously ill while visiting her all-but-secret hideaway. What saves her is too dramatic, too like a miracle to seem only a lucky chance. But as she recovers from a dangerous sickness of the body in the care of a family she doesn't dare to wish to have for her own, the pain in her mind becomes unbearable.

This is a book that sneaks up on you and grabs your heart. As it opens, and even now and then throughout, it threatens to become something bland and saccharine, without any real conflict. But then it keeps opening a window on the conflict inside little Mandy, showing us without compromise not only her awful feelings but also some of her awful behavior. In spite of the latter, the reader's sympathy for her grows as she struggles to put a brave front on what often seems to be a hopeless heartache, until one feels as emotionally wrung-out as the girl herself. It would take a truly cold heart to read it all the way through and not get a lump in your throat, or a qualm of conscience about all those lonely orphans out there in the world.

Julie Andrews, the actress best known for her roles in The Sound of Music, Mary Poppins, and the Princess Diaries film series, wrote this book for one of her daughters during a school holiday when her children came to visit her on a film location. According to a foreword to the "35th anniversary edition" of the book, the manor house and its surrounding cottages where the film was shot inspired the setting of this story. Either on her own or in collaboration with another of her daughters, Andrews has also written The Last of the Really Great Whangdoodles, the "Dumpy the Dumptruck" series, Simeon's Gift, Dragon: Hound of Honor, and other titles.