July 2008 Archives

Reviewed by Renée Bosman, Reference Librarian for Government and Public Affairs and Reference Collection Coordinator

In her first novel, Jhumpa Lahiri addresses themes of cultural identity and the immigrant experience with a quiet grace. Ashoke and Ashima Ganguli are Bengali immigrants living near Boston with their American-born children Sonia and Gogol, the namesake of the title. The novel follows Gogol Ganguli from birth through early adulthood as he struggles with his identity, embodied by an Indian surname, a Russian pet name that was never meant to be his first name, and his desire to be an average American boy. Gogol tries to distance himself from the Bengali immigrant community to which his parents remain tied by changing his name and traveling first to Yale and then to New York, where he works as an architect and dates Maxine, a woman whose upbringing and lifestyle is vastly different from his own. He appears content, yet the question of identity continues to haunt him – “he is conscious of the fact that his immersion in Maxine’s family is a betrayal of his own” – and throughout the entire novel Gogol searches for a place where he can truly belong.

Lahiri is a master at conveying so much in the small details and infusing her seemingly ordinary characters with depth and warmth. After reading the novel, check out the critically-acclaimed movie directed by Mira Nair.

Cabell Library PS3562.A316 N36 2003
Cabell Library Media and Reserves DVDs PN1997.2 .N3647354 2007

Reviewed by John Glover, Reference Librarian for the Humanities

Chuck Palahniuk is well known for writing about extreme topics: underground fight clubs, death cults, murderous songs, marathon-length pornographic acts, horribly disfigurement, etc. He has attracted both critical attention and critical revulsion, and it seems like nobody who reads his work lacks an opinion about it. His fictions careen through genres of all sorts, always using his trademark minimalist style.

Stranger than Fiction is notable for the way that the author applies his eye and style to strange episodes from real life. He describes the life of submariners in "The People Can," detailing the hard, monotonous life of patrols undersea. In "My Life as a Dog," he writes about the injuries people are willing to inflict when they don't perceive their victims as human. The volume also includes a number of odd, odd profiles of various celebrities, as well as stories from his own life, covering everything from lip enhancers to procrastination. This book provides a good taste of Palahniuk's writing, as well as his signature themes.

Cabell Library PS3566.A4554 S77 2004

Reviewed by John Glover, Reference Librarian for the Humanities

This book is a riveting menagerie of story, from the overarching tale of the novel, to the stories contained within it, to the Hans Christian Anderson tale referenced in the title. The co-authors both contributed to the story, with Mignola doing all of the illustrations in his characteristic fantastical Expressionist style. The prose is lucid, with a generally dark tone, leaving the highs and lows of the story to move the reader.

The setting of the story is an alternate Europe, during and directly after World War I. Events and places share many similarities with our world, but not all. Lord Baltimore is a former English officer suffering from the shocks of war, as well as an encounter with the titular vampire. The secondary characters all knew Baltimore at various times in life, and they meet in a tavern to tell stories about him and about their own lives. As it turns out, they have all experienced supernatural events that make them more liable to believe the narrative of Lord Baltimore's tragic life, and the ghastly plague that spread from the trenches of World War I to ravage Europe like the Red Death of Poe. In telling their stories, they come to grips with the damaging effects of evil and strengthen their resolve to do what is necessary to aid their own steadfast tin soldier.

Cabell Library PS3613.I38 B35 2007

Reviewed by John Glover, Reference Librarian for the Humanities

A fictionalized account of the murder of Emmett Till, Bebe Moore Campbell’s Your Blues Ain’t Like Mine is an engaging novel about the lives of the people involved. Spanning the many decades that followed the murder, this story personalizes the heartache suffered by everyone involved, from the family of Armstrong Todd (the fictional stand-in for Emmett Till) to the power brokers of the Mississippi Delta to the man who put a bullet in his stomach to the descendants of every person involved. Campbell has a knack for bringing her characters to life in all their beauty and ugliness. No one, murderer or victim, gets away unexamined in this work.

Whether it was Campbell's intention or not (she died in 2006), this book is the very definition of thought-provoking. Abstract ideas of discrimination and oppression have almost no role in this book; instead the reader experiences the thoughts and feelings of people living in difficult circumstances. To say that black Americans have historically been oppressed is one thing, but it is entirely another to watch the destruction of lives in ways large and small. All the novel's black characters struggle to survive the injustice of Jim Crow, to escape it in the North, only to realize that the legacy of oppression is inescapable, and can mean destruction even when victory is in sight. All the characters -- white or black, male or female, rich or poor, young or old -- are forever damaged by the things they do and that are done to them as a result of who they are. In the end, however, most of them find a place of strength to draw from in order to handle life's trials.

Cabell Library PS3553.A4395 Y68 1992