Please Look After Mom by Kyung-Sook Shin

Park So-Nyo, the incredibly saintly (and elderly) matriarch of a Korean family of six, disappears after being separated from her husband at a Seoul subway station. The family struggles with disbelief, guilt and desperation as the search stretches from weeks into months. As told through the perspectives of the adult children (oldest son and daughter) and their parents, one realizes that the family never really knew Mother and never appreciated her sacrifices for them.

The author, herself from a rural background, writes vividly of the harshness of rural life and the stresses on families that are split between children who have moved to the cities and the parents who have stayed at home. There are generational as well as geographic differences. How selfish are Hyong-chol and Chi-hon? Did the demands of their careers and urban lives lead inevitably to the breakdown of communication with their parents? Is this typical of their generation?

Shin informs the reader of many aspects of Korean culture: the veneration of ancestors, the role and expectations of the eldest son, the removal of a daughter from her own to her husband's family, responsibilities of children to their parents and siblings to each other. She writes of the importance of education and the devastation when a child either fails in school or cannot go to school. So-Nyo sells her ring so that Chi-hon can stay in school and suffers shame from her own illiteracy. Her husband's younger brother dies tragically, his life seemingly doomed after he has to leave school to work on the farm.

Self-examination and regret permeate the story, but there are also moments of reconnection and affirmation in the family's struggle with its loss.

Half Brother by Kenneth Oppel

In the 1970's, a new-born chimpanzee was forcibly torn from his mother's arms and given to a family in New York City as part of a scientific experiment on language capabilities in animals. The baby chimp was raised to think he was a human child. As told in journalist Elizabeth Hess' biography of the chimp, Nim Chimpsky: the Chimp Who Would be Human, the little chimp was loved, dressed as a toddler, and taught American Sign Language. Tragically but typically for animal studies at the time, once the funding for the experiment ended, Nim was unceremoniously removed from his home, stripped of his favorite toys, foods and human companions, and caged in a serious of research laboratories before finally arriving at a primate sanctuary.

The ethical issue of experimenting on a sensitive and intelligent animal in the name of progress forms a critical part of the Half Brother. In an interview, author Oppel credits original news stories of Herbert Terrance's research with inspiring him to write a fictionalized account of the LaFarge family and Nim. In Half Brother, the story centers on the relationship of Ben Tomlin, teenage son of a behavioral scientist, with his new baby "brother," Zan.

In the beginning of the project, Ben and his mom take seriously their responsibility to integrate Zan into the family--to share meals, play, and bond with him. At the same time, Ben becomes aware that his father thinks of Zan not as "a beloved little baby," but as a "specimen." Tension mounts as Ben's dad changes protocols to make Zan more productive--to learn more signs more quickly. Without better results, Dr. Tomlin can't find funding. Ben wants to stand up for Zan, but what can he do? What happens to Zan if the funding is cut off? What happens if Zan really hurts someone?

Woven into the personal nature of this particular experiment is the issue of animal rights and the humane treatment of animal subjects. Half Brother is fiction, but the science experiments in linguistics and behavioral psychology are based on real research. The relationship between Ben and his father is compelling. Ben wants to admire and respect his father, and wants his father's attention in return. Ben is initially proud to be a part of the study, but increasingly questions the impact of his father's research protocols and professional objectivity on the quality of care for Zan. Ultimately, Ben must decide where he stands and whether he can let his brother go.

The Last Light of the Sun by Guy Gavriel Kay

Kay is an award-winning author of historical/fantasy novels. The Last Light of the Sun is set in medieval England, roughly during the 10th century, when Saxons were struggling to organize themselves to resist repeated raids by Vikings. Kay interweaves the lives of two Erlings (read Norsemen)--Thorkell Einarson and Bern Thorkellson; a Cyngael prince, Alun ab Owyn; Ceinon, high cleric of the Cyngael; and Aeldred, king of the Anglcyn (Saxon English). These characters, some modeled on actual historical figures, all assume a role in countering a vengeance-driven raid by Jormsviking mercenaries on Brynnfell, homestead of a Cyngael earl famed for his victories against the Erlings. Kay brings fantasy into his history of the land and its people, drawing on legends of faerie folk in Anglcyn and Cyngael and of witches on the Erling island of Rabady. He offers insights into the routine violence and hardship in the lives of commoners-- serfs, women and fighters on both sides. Interspersed with the action are soliloquies on the meaning of life and faith. The strength of the Last Light lies in its narrative and the depiction of a grim world now lost to history, but still open to heroic and romantic imaginings.

The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating

The title of this delightful little book refers one of many evenings when the author, seriously ill and bed-ridden, was unable to sleep. She had been casually observing a small snail that a friend had dropped into a pot of wild violets, as it nightly crept over the edge of the pot in search of food and water. She noticed that it had munched through some envelopes and, thinking it sought more nourishment, she started leaving it wilted violets that had fallen from their stems (it would not eat the fresh ones from the plant). As Bailey describes the experience,

"It [the snail] made its way down the side of the pot and investigated the offering with great interest and then began to eat one of the blossoms. A petal started to disappear at a barely discernible rate. I listed carefully. I could hear it eating. The sound was of someone very small munching celery continuously."

The author proceeds to relate many of the things she then learned about gastropods, as she read her library books and watched the little visitor, now in its own terrarium, explore its world. She--and we--learn about the chemistry and functions of the snail's slime, its teeth, and how it perceives its environment through its three senses. She compares her life, now so immobile, with the snail's activities, its body's functions, and physical capabilities--how it can move, balance and navigate blindly, relying chiefly on its sense of smell. She imbues the snail with life; it appears puzzled, it has memory, it can make an epiphragm, "...the snake is home but is not accepting visitors."


Elisabeth Tova Bailey has written a book that is at once philosophical and highly informative. It is the perfect book to take readers away from their hectic lives and experience another specie's world as nineteenth-century naturalists.

a mercy

Pulitzer Prize winner Toni Morrison's newest novel, a mercy, portrays a 1650's farmer, Jacob, who becomes rich off the rum trade and decides to build an extravagant mansion, complete with 13 rooms, a marble fireplace and an iron wrought gate embellished with two intertwining serpents. There are other voices in the story including Lina: a Native American woman whose tribe was killed by the "disease of the white man," Florens and Sorrow : two young African slaves, and Rebekka: Jacob's wife, who came to America to escape the religious crisis brewing in her home country. In this Eden on Earth, it is the three women whose cries resemble the voice of reason whilst their husband/master spends his money on unnecessary accessories for his new home. The irony unfolds when during the mansion's construction, Jacob falls deathly ill, dies, and leaves the half-built house to his pregnant wife and three servants to fend for themselves in difficult times.

In a mercy, Morrison crafts her story into short, distilled chapters which, in conjunction with her terse writing style, creates an easy to read yet masterful interpretation of one of the most turbulent eras in our country's history. Her story can be enjoyed at surface level, yet is full of deeper metaphors and allusions that only become clear after a closer reading. Morrison's writing is an attractive option for both genders because she writes the book with characters from both perspectives. In a mercy, Morrison asks age-old questions on the effects of slavery as well as the consequences that come along with indiscriminate acts of mercy. At only 167 pages, a mercy can easily be read in one sitting over the weekend but forces the reader to ponder the story weeks after one has returned the book. I would highly recommend this literary treasure and only regret the fact that I didn't read it sooner.

City of Veils

The body of a woman, violently murdered and possibly tortured, washes up on a beach in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. The local police initially don't want to bother investigating, as the woman was probably just a non-Arab domestic servant killed by her employer. But forensic scientist Katya Hijazi is determined to find the murderer, and draws in Nayir Sharqi, a desert guide who helped her in a previous case. It turns out that the victim was a free-lance photographer, who pushed the boundaries of the conservative Muslim society while pursuing stories on the status of women and a possible alternate version of the Quran. Leila (the victim) was also connected to an American security guard who has mysteriously disappeared, leaving his wife, Miriam, isolated and fearful in a male-dominated world.

Katya and Nayir first appeared in Ms Ferraris book, Finding Nouf. They are constantly at odds--with mutual attraction vying with society's expectations and obligations regarding communication between the sexes and with the proper role for women in an Orthodix Islamic culture. In this second book the author has added another character, Inspector Osama Ibrahim, who also struggles to balance his progressive views on women with traditional expectations for a wife and family.

The mystery is compelling and the descriptions of life in and Islamic society and moving and insightful. I highly recommend both Finding Nouf and City of Veils.

Incarceron by Catherine Fisher

This was a great book for a three-day weekend (400+ pages). Incarceron refers to prison-world, created as a perfect society to isolate and at the same time care for felons and others deemed dangerous to the Outside. But the society has devolved into a grim, violent tyranny, where technology is now used to repress and spy on the subservient population and deceit, murder and thievery are necessary to survive. Prisoner oath-brothers Finn and Keiro, along with the former slave Attia and the Sapient Gildas, join forces in a quest to escape from Incarceron, using Finn's visions, belief in a better world, and the possession of a magic key.

On the Outside, there is a matching key, which enables its owner to communicate with those inside the prison. Claudia, the daughter of the Warden of Incarceron, discovers it when she sneaks into her father's private study. Claudia and and her tutor Jared (another Sapient) struggle to solve its mysteries and to save the prisoners. At the same time they must also contend with her father's ambitious marriage plans for her and with the politics and plotting that govern life in the Outside.

The story lines weave together, as Finn and Claudia realize they depend on each other for their freedom. The futuristic world is creepy and cautionary, with questions about life, loyalty and human frailty.