Merry Christmas!

Madonna in a Fur Coat by Sabahattin Ali

First published in Turkey in 1943; published in translation in Great Britain in 2016; published by Other Press on November 7, 2017

The initial narrator of Madonna in a Fur Coat is newly employed in a Turkish firm when he meets Raif Efendi, who translates the firm’s documents from Turkish to German. Raif responds to hostility and derision with “unwavering serenity” and calculated isolation. His children and siblings show him little respect because his earnings are meager. Raif responds as if disdain is his due.

From his sickbed, Raif asks the narrator to destroy a notebook that Raif has been keeping since 1933. The narrator persuades Raif to allow him to read the notebook before chucking it into the stove. The theme of the tragic love story that Raif tells in the notebook has to do with the cruelness of fate, the burden we share of accepting the accidents of life that are thrust upon us.

Raif’s story takes him as a boy from a Turkish village to Berlin, where his father has sent him to learn how to make soap. He has little ambition but loves to read. Learning German opens a world of literature that had never been translated into Turkish. Visiting an art exhibition, he is taken by the modernistic self-portrait by Maria Puder of a woman in a fur coat.

Naturally, Raif’s notebook tells the story of meeting the artist and their odd friendship — odd because Maria hates men, hates their arrogant pride and entitlement, and conditions her friendship with Raif on never being asked for anything. But Maria senses an innocence in Raif. He seems like a little girl (a judgment that Raif’s father also bestowed, to Raif’s consternation), and is thus the kind of man she might befriend.

Raif, who has always “shied away from human company, never sharing my thoughts with a soul,” feels overwhelmed by his unspent passion for Maria. His conviction that life has no meaning is suddenly challenged by the meaning he finds in his chaste encounters with Maria as he experiences the thrill of finally being understood. Yet Maria believes that solitude is the essence of life, that “all unions are based on falsehood,” that we construct the partner or friend we want rather than seeing them in their reality, and then flee when the reality replaces the construct. For all their similarities, Raif and Maria have different opinions about love that place a barrier between them.

While the novel describes Raif’s evolving feelings, its focus is on Raif’s philosophy of life. Raif believes that no woman has ever loved him and none ever will because women are incapable of true love. “Instead, they ached for the unattainable — the opportunities missed, the salve that their broken hearts longed for — thereby mistaking their yearnings for love.” But Raif’s peceptions and beliefs change often, sometimes daily, sometimes hourly. Change is Raif’s only constant despite his puzzlement with Maria, who makes a virtue of her inconsistency, telling Raif “that’s just the way I am … one day like this, another day like that.” At the same time, the story is about a man who understands the inevitably of change but is incapable of coping with it, a man whose will to believe in himself is irreparably broken.

As the novel moves to its conclusion, it becomes a story of tragic fate, and it is Raif’s reaction to his fate that defines the rest of his existence. Rather than spoiling the story by revealing its details (the resolution has elements of a soap opera), I’ll highlight some of Sabahattin Ali’s quotable prose:

“Nothing grieves me more than seeing someone who has given up on the world being forced to smile.”

“But isn’t this how souls come together, by holding another’s every idea to be true and making it their own?”

“How painful it is, after thinking that a woman has given us everything, to see that in truth she has given us nothing — to see that instead of having drawn her closer, she is farther away than ever!”

“The logic in our minds has always been at odds with the logic of life.”

“For a brief while, a woman had pulled me out of listless lethargy; she had taught me that I was a man, or rather, a human being; she had shown me that the world was not as absurd as I had previously thought and that I had the capacity for joy.”

Although set in Turkey and Berlin, the story has no boundaries. Its themes are relevant to any time or culture. I might not recommend the story for its plot, but its insight into human nature, its exceptional characterization, and its elegant prose make the novel a standout tragedy.

RECOMMENDED

The Wolves of Winter by Tyrell Johnson

Published by Scribner on January 2, 2018

The Wolves of Winter is best approached as a young adult novel. It doesn’t appear to be marketed that way, but it has all the YA characteristics: a young adult protagonist at odds with an older adult world; the protagonist’s discovery that she has greater resilience/strength/skills than she imagined; a broadening of that character’s life experiences as the novel progresses; her blossoming but chaste love for a good-hearted bad boy; her clashes with adult/parental authority; her reassurance of parental love; her confrontation of easily-resolved moral issues; and an undemanding plot that moves quickly and covers a relatively short time span. That description isn’t meant to disparage YA fiction (some of it is quite good), but readers should know what to expect when they pick up a book.

The Wolves of Winter posits a nuclear war, started (credibly enough) by the America First crowd. When the radioactive dust settles, America is no longer first, because nobody comes in first in a holocaust. America’s real downfall, however, was launching a biological attack on China (or at least that’s what the characters theorize), which backfired when travelers defied the Asian travel ban and carried the virus back to the United States.

The protagonist in this post-apocalyptic novel is Gwendolynn McBride, a 23-year-old who prefers Lynn. She isn’t big enough to avoid being bullied by the survivalist libertarians who seem to welcome post-apocalyptic living because the strong can bully the weak when no society exists to enforce civilized rules. But Lynn’s family is supportive; they deal with problems as they arise.

One potential problem is a wanderer named Jax. He joins the family while recovering from an injury. Lynn is fascinated by him (to her family’s consternation), but Jax’s history might make him a man to be avoided. Jax is being pursued by Immunity and his mere presence brings trouble to Lynn’s family.

Immunity is the shortened version of a longer organizational name given to a mysterious group that purports to be combatting the virus by searching for a way to create (you guessed it) immunity. Lynn’s mother seems to know something about Immunity but she won’t talk about it. Whether Immunity is a force for good or evil is one of the questions that the reader must ponder for much of the novel. Of course, all the family secrets are revealed near the novel’s end.

Another mystery for much of the novel is whether Jax is a good guy or a bad guy. He seems to have enhanced abilities (speed and strength among them) that make him a dangerous fellow, but can he be trusted? Well, this is YA fiction so you can probably guess the answer.

Lynn is the kind of independent, defiant young woman who has become a standard fixture of YA post-apocalyptic fiction. Naturally, she is attracted to Jax, because romance between a young, tough survivor like Lynn and a mysterious stranger like Jax is part of the formula for this kind of book. In fact, much of the book is formulaic. The story holds few surprises and the various threats Lynn faces are easily overcome. Since the story creates no fear that Lynn is ever in serious danger, it also creates little suspense. The ending is improbably happy, but that’s part of the formula. The Wolves of Winter is well-crafted, and if you like the formula, you’ll probably like the book. If you’re tired of the formula or would like to see it wielded with a new twist, you should probably give the novel a pass.

RECOMMENDED WITH RESERVATIONS

The Ballad of Black Bart by Loren D. Estleman

Published by Macmillan/Forge Books on November 14, 2017

The Ballad of Black Bart is based on the celebrated stagecoach robber of the 1870s to 1880s. The novel includes some biographical detail that I presume to be accurate, although Loren Estleman admits to taking “small liberties with fact.” Still, the story is very much an imagined life, placing thoughts in the bandit’s head and recreating a personality that may or may not hew to his actual life. The novel is a literary look at an outlaw who captured the public’s imagination on the strength of two poems and good bit of audacity, the sort of thing that keeps journalists in business, particularly the yellow journalists of the time.

Black Bart was the British-born Charles Boles, although he used the pen name Charles Bolton. The novel follows Bolton to Iowa, where he marries and makes an unsuccessful attempt to live an ordinary life as a farmer, husband, and father. From there Bolton chased the gold rush to California, arriving too late to stake any serious claims. But most of the story addresses Bolton’s alter-ego as Black Bart, the nonviolent (his shotgun was never loaded, or so the novel says) stagecoach robber, who makes his way on aching feet from one robbery to another.

Apart from twice leaving behind a verse for the Wells, Fargo police to find (establishing himself as a po8 in the public imagination), Black Bart was known for his gentlemanly politeness during robberies, and for escaping on foot, leaving behind no trail to follow. As Charles Bolton, he banked his ill-gotten proceeds at Wells, Fargo (where else?) and enjoyed the comforts of fine dining, fine living, and the occasional paid company of women whose fineness the book does not describe.

Bart’s nemesis in the novel is Jim Hume, head of the Wells, Fargo police, who is also described in biographical detail, calling attention to the similarities between the two men. As with Bart, the details are carefully winnowed to explain the shape of Hume’s life without bogging down the narrative. Hume is more a meticulous detective than a gun-slinging lawman, making him a perfect fit to lead Wells, Fargo’s private police department and to track down its most elusiver robber.

The Ballad of Black Bart naturally describes some stagecoach robberies, but the descriptions are brief. The novel is less a western than it is a pair of convincing character sketches. The story is relatively brief and not as meaty as my favorite biographical western, Mary Doria Russell’s Doc, a literary examination of Doc Holliday. But while this book is comparatively slender, Estleman’s decision to trim out all but the essential details assures the vitality of those that remain. My favorite chapter follows Bart as he walks back to the Iowa town where he lived before abandoning his wife and daughters. Bart’s thoughts and actions in a few pages speak volumes about the man he became (as least as imagined by Estleman).

If you’re looking for shootouts between white and black hats, Bart’s empty gun robs the story of traditional western content. If you can be satisfied with a fictionalized examination of an acclaimed bandit and the man who tracked him, told with literary flair, The Ballad of Black Bart is a good choice.

RECOMMENDED

The Seeds of Treason by Ted Allbeury

First published in Great Britain in 1986; published by Dover on November 6, 2017

Jan Massey wants to be understood, so he agrees to tell his story to a reporter from the BBC. The interview takes place in his home in a remote part of Spain. Massey is a former MI6 agent who committed an indiscretion. The novel is his story.

Massey ran the Berlin office for MI6 after the war, a life marred only by a brief disastrous marriage until he met Anna Kolkov. Like Massey, she has Polish roots. Her husband, Alexei Kolkov, is a KGB officer in Berlin, which makes Massey’s affair with Anna rather dangerous. It’s also a bit unconvincing, since there seems little beyond their Polish roots to make them fall in love at first sight or to make Massey behave so impetuously. We are given to understand that Slavic passions are to blame, but the affair happens too quickly and too deeply to make me think that Massey would be such a fool. In any event, the affair gets Massey into a pickle before the novel reaches its midway point.

As the title suggests, traitors abound in The Seeds of Treason. Massey is getting information from a KGB agent named Kuznetsov who is, to some degree, a traitor to Russia, and from a greedy French spy who seems to be betraying everyone he can. Andrew Johnson, a member of the British military who is handling signals intelligence in Berlin under Massey’s watch, decides he’ll be more appreciated by the Russians than the British. He thinks his prostitute girlfriend will even like him better if he’s a Russian hero, but the girlfriend is also prepared to betray anyone who doesn’t pay her enough.

And then there’s an NSA mathematician/codebreaker named Jimbo Vick who isn’t knowingly a traitor, but chats without discretion when he’s in bed with his beautiful girlfriend. As with Massey, love is the source of betrayal. But it is Massey who is the biggest fish in the pond, and a great catch for the KGB if they can use his affair with Anna against him.

Ted Allbeury writes in a low-key, matter-of-fact style, a nice change from the hysteria that pervades so much American spy fiction. The novel lives up to its title by explaining how three different people become traitors, although Vick’s story, at least, seems to be thrown in to provide a third example. Vick’s story might be the most credible of the three but he plays a relatively small role in the story. The most convincing character development is given to Johnson. Whether or not his sudden decision to seek appreciation from the Russians that he can't get from the British is believable, he's such a self-centered creep that the reader will readily see him as someone who would betray his country.

Massey is a more likable character than either Johnson or Vick and, if I didn’t necessarily find his betrayal to be credible, I did appreciate Allbeury’s effort to make him sympathetic. Allbeury makes the point that when a government labels someone a traitor, its first order of business is to paint him as deplorable in all aspects of life, because the government can’t have people understanding why someone might betray the government or, even worse, supporting the betrayer. Not all traitors are deplorable, particularly when they betray a country that isn't your own. That's the lesson Allbeury tries to teach in The Seeds of Treason, and I think he does so successfully.

The novel’s ending seems realistic. This is the only Allbeury novel I’ve read (it seems to the third that Dover has returned to print), so I don’t have much basis for comparison, but I wouldn’t rank Allbeury with John le Carré or Len Deighton or Gerald Seymour, simply because those masters of British spy fiction are justly known for gripping stories and compelling characters. I would instead compare Allbeury to Clive Egleton, who wrote British spy novels that were pleasurable if a bit unexciting.

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