October's Read: On Sal Mal Lane by Ru Freeman

Meeting date: Monday, October 20
Location: Open Book, Mahai Book Club Room
Special guest: Jocelyn Hale, Executive Director, The Loft Literary Center
Host: Chris

From the publisher, our own Graywolf Press: On the day the Herath family moves in, Sal Mal Lane is still a quiet street, disturbed only by the cries of the children whose triumphs and tragedies sustain the families that live there. As the neighbors adapt to the newcomers in different ways, the children fill their days with cricket matches, romantic crushes, and small rivalries.

But the tremors of civil war are mounting, and the conflict threatens to engulf them all. In a heart-rending novel poised between the past and the future, the innocence of the children -- a beloved sister and her over-protective siblings, a rejected son and his twin sisters, two very different brothers -- contrasts sharply with the petty prejudices of the adults charged with their care. In Ru Freeman's masterful hands, On Sal Mal Lane, a story of what was lost to a country and her people, becomes a resounding cry for reconciliation.

A big welcome to the evening's special guest

Jocelyn Hale, executive director of The Loft Literary Center, will join us for conversation and discussion. She's reading the book now!

The Human Legacy of a Failed Utopia

Title: In Times of Fading Light
Author: Eugen Ruge translated by Anthea Bell
Host: Lois

Winner of the German Book Prize, In Times of Fading Light is the multigenerational story of an East German family before and after the fall of Communism. The novel begins and ends in September 2001, first with the ailing Alexander Umnitzer visiting his once academically brilliant and now demented father before traveling to Mexico to search for answers to his family's mysteries, and ending in Mexico.

In between, we spend 1952 with ardent Communists Wilhelm and Charlotte, who are repatriating from Mexico to post-war East Berlin before construction of the wall, 1961 with a young Kurt and his Russian wife Irina, 1973 for Alexander's stint in the East German army, and then to 1989, by which time Alexander is in West Germany working in theater, having left behind his son Markus. The story's touchstone is Wilhelm's 90th birthday party celebration, which is told and retold from the perspective of several characters, to an effect that is both heart-breaking and hilarious.

Insights and Opinions

+ Having lost some of our membership to travel and one to injury, ours was a smaller but still enthusiastic group. Being in Open Book, our literary haven, primed the conversational pump. And so did the wine.

+ Ruge is a master at fully inhabiting his characters. From the ancient Russian Baba Nadya to 12-year-old Markus to Charlotte and Wilhelm who share only a fervor for Communism but nothing else, to Irina the Russian emigrant whose roast goose is three parts tradition and two parts alcoholism, these characters each have a distinct voice that is entirely believable.

Lois' incredibly indulgent peanut thingies

+ On the other hand, there is a flatness to Ruge's characters -- a profound lack of empathy. As Lois put it, "I didn't like any of these characters much when reading them through someone else's eyes, but once inside their heads, I liked them much better." Each of these characters is sensitive to the hurts and slights they suffer at each others hands, but the harm each of them wreaks on their family members is wholly invisible to them. Perhaps a society that stomps out the individual kills the soul, and one generation passes this deadness of spirit on to the next.

+ We come back to Wilhelm's 90th birthday celebration several times. Each time, a different character describes the event, noticing different details, objects and smells, interpreting what people say and do in a different way. With every telling, the party grows more fractured, absurd, sad and funny. Since every character's point of view is different and paints the facts in a different light, it's almost as if the reader becomes another character.

+ Ruge defines his characters by their obsessions -- Irina and her roast goose, Charlotte's incessant remodeling, Wilhelm's grossly inflated sense of his own importance to the Communist machine. Maybe all of us are defined by our obsessions.

+ Lurching back and forth between characters and time periods made the book hard going for some. The reader needs to be alert to stay on track. Note-taking helps, and Shirley (our academic) would have loved some footnotes, especially to deliver details about locations and historical events that may not be familiar to an American audience.

+ There is a note of underground feminism in this book. Both Irina and Charlotte have greater credentials than their husbands, but their husbands are lionized while they labor alongside, unrecognized.

+ Most of the group loved the book, but not all. Joanne felt a connection to all of the characters because they were all so absolutely human. Steve, on the other hand, wanted to see some kind of progression in the characters, not just a deeper desperation. Liz felt the writing was wonderful, but could not relate to the characters, feeling they lacked empathy and learned nothing about themselves by the end of the novel. But as Kurt's character says, "they were all eternal exiles" and then later points out "how cheerful pure despair can make you." Perhaps their essential human flaws are enough.

+ Definitely worth your time.