If Morning Ever Comes: A Novel [Paperback] Review

It is hard to believe that Anne Tyler wrote this book, her first, when she was only 22 years old. To have such perception, such vision, such maturity, and such knowledge of the intricacies of family life is something I would expect of a writer twice that age.
This is also, I believe, her only novel set in the south, where Tyler was brought up. In a rare interview, she has said that she considers herself a Southerner. She certainly paints a good picture of a typical extended southern family! And this family has all the quirks and curious behaviors that have become Tyler's hallmark over the years.
Poor BenJoe...he is so confused, having taken the path of least resistance by going to law school in New York City, a totally foreign element to this small-town boy. He uses the slightest excuse to rush back home where he gets into everyone's business in a few short days, even though the houseful of women (mother, grandmother, five sisters, and a niece) clearly was doing just fine without him. Tyler makes us like him. She writes from his point of view and gets it letter-perfect.
This book is about much more than a small-town extended southern family - it is about birth and death, living and dying, and the unbreakable bonds of family.

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A touchingly funny tale from the Pultizer Prize-winning author of Saint Maybe. Ben Joe Hawkes comes from a large, cheerful family of women. But when one of his sisters takes her baby and leaves her husband, everything--including his perceptions of the past--changes. "Phenomenal".--The New York Times.

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Morning and Evening Talk [Paperback] Review

(A star rating is not appropriate for this "novel," which is really not a novel in the traditional sense.)Written in 1987, this last entry in the Cairo series by Nobel Prize winner Naguib Mahfouz has no beginning, middle, and end, and no real plot.There are no standard chronology and no strong individual characters who develop fully during the action.Modeled on traditional Arab biographical dictionaries, which recorded the lives of influential citizens in single-paragraph entries, this is Mahfouz's most experimental novel.Here he arranges sixty-seven character sketches according to the Arab alphabetical order of the characters' first names, creating a series of short personal anecdotes which reveal lives and convey the history of three Cairo families from the Napoleonic wars through the death of Anwar Sadat.

The book begins with the death of a child, an episode which is recalled near the end of the book, and as the child's family is recreated, in random order by alphabet, the novel ripples out, incorporating different eras and other families, over four or five generations.Showing the progression of Egyptian political change, Mahfouz moves (non-chronologically) from the entrance of Napoleon into Cairo in 1798to the British Occupation from 1882 - 1952;the 1919 Revolution against the British occupation;the Free Officer's movement, founded by Gamal Abdel Nasser, leading to the July Revolution of 1952;the Tripartite Aggression (the Suez Crisis) of 1956, in which Britain, France, and Israel attacked Egypt for nationalizing the Suez canal; the Six Day Warof 1967, in which Israel attacked Egypt;the War of Attrition from 1967 - 70 between Egypt and Israel; and the Yom Kippur War of 1973, in which Egypt and Syria attempted to recapture land lost to Israel in the Six Day War.

As much as the book may be about political change, however, it is at least, if not more, about marriage and its importance in the culture. Throughout these generations, members of the same family intermarry to protect inheritance and wealth, but other marriages are also arranged among other "appropriate" families.The women are educated, at least at the level of literacy, and as time moves toward the present, the wives are often educated professionals--lawyers or physicians--who move easily between Egyptian and European cultures.A few of the individual family members move to other parts of the world--Germany, the United States, France, and Saudi Arabia, returning often to Cairo, despite their absences for significant periods of time.And while some of the characters may be passionately committed to some of the political movements of the day (and others may oppose them just as passionately), none of them are religious extremists.

Readers new to Mahfouz will probably want to start elsewhere for their introduction, perhaps with the more traditional The Cairo Trilogy or even Akhenaten: Dweller in Truth, written just two years before this novel.Written when Mahfouz was an old man reflecting on history and the meaning of being Egyptian, this novel can be tedious and sometimes frustrating.The characters' names are often very similar, making it difficult to remember who is who, and the lives of many characters resemble those of other characters and do not add significant new information.Still, likean impressionistic or pointillist painting, the individualbiographies provide color and interest, which, taken together, give a picture of a broad cross section of Egyptian society dealing, over time, with the winds of change. n Mary Whipple

Palace Walk (Cairo Trilogy), Book 1
Palace of Desire (Cairo Trilogy), Book 2
Sugar Street (The Cairo Trilogy), Book 3
Children of the Alley: A Novel
Three Novels of Ancient Egypt: Khufu's Wisdom, Rhadopis of Nubia, Thebes at War (Everyman's Library)



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This unusual epic from the Nobel Laureate Naguib Mahfouz portrays five generations of one sprawling family against the upheavals of two centuries of modern Egyptian history.

Set in Cairo, Morning and Evening Talk traces three related families from the arrival of Napoleon to the 1980s, through short character sketches arranged in alphabetical order. This highly experimental device produces a kind of biographical dictionary, whose individual entries come together to paint a vivid portrait of life in Cairo from a range of perspectives. The characters include representatives of every class and human type and as the intricate family saga unfolds, a powerful picture of a society in transition emerges. This is a tale of change and continuity, of the death of a traditional way of life and the road to independence and beyond, seen through the eyes of Egypt's citizens. Naguib Mahfouz's last chronicle of Cairo is both an elegy to a bygone era and a tribute to the Egyptian spirit.

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Good Morning, Midnight [Paperback] Review

It is no wonder that after the publication of this novel people assumed Jean Rhys had committed suicide. It is a dark, introverted, soul-searching novel. It's brilliance lies in the compassion with which Sasha is treated. This is a woman who is unquestionably at the end of her tether. Life occurs almost unconsciously to her. She drinks non-stop and thinks of fashion before eating. But these aren't superficial choices. They are the few soft whispers of a woman about to go over the brink. Throughout the novel you are given brief glimpses of her past as a shop assistant and the troubles in her marriage. In themselves the troubles which result from them are not ample enough to drive a normal woman to such desperation. You feel that the reason for her state of mind is more the result of a profound neglect of her individual spirit by men. She is led on to believe in a progression of being, but is abandoned to clutch at the ghosts of her old haunts in Paris. This is a sharp contrast to the ideas that we have about artistic scene of Paris in this time period. It is a more sincerely concentrated personal experience than most accounts. It is interesting to think of the end in contrast to the jubilant yeses of Molly Bloom in Ulysses. Sasha's yes is one of doom and resignation to a world that has flown past her.
Despite its depressing character, this novel is a fascinating look at a tendency to sink into a psychological state often ignored. It is also a subtle portrayal of an identity built on a knife's edge. Luckily, Ms Rhys did survive this novel (however unhappily). It is a miracle that she did considering the violent lack of self worth of Sasha; to have imagined such a person must have been terrifying indeed.

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Sasha Jensen has returned to Paris, the city of both her happiest moments and her most desperate. Her past lies in wait for her in cafes, bars, and dress shops, blurring all distinctions between nightmare and reality. When she is picked up by a young man, she begins to feel that she is still capable of desires and emotions. Few encounters in fiction have been so brilliantly conceived, and few have come to a more unforgettable end.

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