My Purple Scented Novel by Ian McEwan

First published in 2016; published by Vintage on June 19, 2018

“My Purple Scented Novel” is a short story of literary evil, the worst kind of evil imaginable in the world of serious literature: plagiarism. Two lifelong friends have known each other since college. Both are writers. One turned out to be successful. The other had children. Eventually, the world believes that one stole a novel from the other, and in fact that’s what happened, but the theft is not what it appears to be.

The reader might wonder what motivated the evil writer to act as he did. Jealousy? He denies it. A desire for wealth and fame? He claims to be content with a drafty house, a professorship that is dragging its way to tenure, and a legacy of out-of-print novels. But given his fiendish conduct, the reader might be disinclined to believe a word he says.

Maybe the evil deed is something that Ian McEwan could imagine himself doing if not for the talent that assured he would never be a mid-list, out-of-print author. Perhaps all great writers are a bit evil, at least in their imaginations.

Perhaps the point of the story is not so much the writer’s motivation as the deed itself, the audacity of behaving in such a selfish way and getting away with it. If it weren’t so awful, the display of chutzpah would almost be admirable.

“My Purple Scented Novel” was first published in the New Yorker and is now available as a Vintage Short. It is quite short, but McEwan fans who don’t want to read it (or listen to McEwan read it) on the New Yorker website now have the option of downloading it to a reading gadget. The story is worth a reader’s time regardless of how the reader decides to experience it.

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The Melody by Jim Crace

Published by Doubleday/Nan A. Talese on June 19, 2018

Alfred (Mr. Al) Busi, a widowed, retired singer of modest fame, is at war with the realtors (including his nephew) who want him to sell the villa he has occupied his entire life and with the animals that tip over his garbage containers at night. Responding to frightening noises, he is clawed and bitten, perhaps by a cat or a feral child, and is nursed by the sister of his deceased wife as he tries to decide whether he longs for her or just for a life that isn’t lonely. The attack is only the start of a bad day that will soon include a robbery with another beating and an apparent end to Busi’s legacy as the town’s most valued singer.

Busi is philosophical rather than self-pitying as he considers the unfavorable ways in which his life is changing as he grows old. It certainly isn’t improved by the rabies shot he endures, by his nagging fear of a painful death after refusing the rest of the shots in the series, or by the journalist who mocks his belief that he was mauled by a naked boy. Where Busi was once greeted by smiles as he strolled through town, people look at his bandages, see him hunched over from the rabies shot as he walks, and view him with suspicion, if not derision. He has become “a sack of grimaces and reflexes, of tics and twitches, spasms and convulsions.”

His neighbors and nephew assure Busi that his home is about to be torn down, to be replaced by a planned development of pricey homes with ocean views known as The Grove, one of which has been promised to Busi. But it is Busi’s life that will be torn down when the journalist writes his article. Busi might be an icon, but the town discovers that icons are easily replaced. How Busi deals with his many losses, and how (by extension) the elderly cope with loss, is an underlying theme.

Property development that benefits developers at the expense of people who lose their homes (and at the expense of habitats for local fauna) is another theme. Local media cannot focus on “disparities between the ways in which the poor were treated in town and how the prosperous were sheltered and defended” because media cannot survive if they attack wealth and privilege. While “each gain is paid for with a loss,” only the gains are reported. The developers scheme to destroy the woods in which the ironically named The Grove will be built, while touting themselves as environmental champions. The homeless are evacuated from the aptly named Poverty Park, unseen and unremembered, so that the park can become a refuge for the wildlife displaced by the construction of The Grove. On the bright side, if one exists, the novel suggests that the people who are best positioned to survive an inevitable apocalypse are those who have been given “the gift of poverty,” for they have learned to scrounge like wild animals.

The first part of The Melody seems to be written in the third person, as an omniscient narrator tells us the inner workings of Busi’s mind, but there are hints that we are, in fact, hearing the first person perspective of a narrator who has been observing Busi closely. The second part, much shorter, takes place six years later, when Busi has turned 70. It is written in the first person, likely by the narrator of the novel’s first part. Jim Crace’s willingness to play with the conventions of the novel, perhaps to play with reader, is both interesting and unsettling. In the novel’s first part, we think we know Busi’s innermost thoughts, but perhaps we only know what the narrator has imagined those thoughts to be. The idea seems to be that we cannot be sure we know any person's thoughts, maybe not even our own.

The story’s many ambiguities (was Busi really attacked by a feral child? how reliable is the narrator’s account of Busi’s life?) give the reader ample opportunity to reshape the narrative, to decide what is true and false. Crace’s evocative prose makes it easy to picture the town, its quarrelsome residents, its flat-winged hawks and scavenging dogs. I’m not quite sure what point is served by the novel’s second part — the story could have ended without muddling it by shifting the point of view — but on the whole, I found great value in the contemplation of Busi’s senior years, reflective as they are of the fears and regrets and loneliness of so many people who are watching their productive life and relationships fade away in the rear-view mirror.

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Number One Chinese Restaurant by Lillian Li

Published by Henry Holt and Co. on June 19, 2018

At the age of 40, Jimmy is one of the youngest workers at the Duck House, a D.C. restaurant that he and his brother Johnny inherited from their father. Jimmy is known to his staff as “the little leader.” The restaurant manager is Nan, whose plan to spend more time with her son Pat by hiring him a dishwasher has been a disaster. Johnny is teaching a class in Hong Kong, taking a break from the restaurant business, but events force Johnny’s premature return to D.C., where he must listen to his mother’s remonstrations about what a bad son he has been.

Based on a brief internship in a fancy restaurant, Jimmy yearns to prepare gourmet fusion dishes of his own creation, not his father’s Americanized Chinese dishes that are so popular with his customers. Jimmy plans to open a new restaurant with the help of a real estate agent (and new lover) named Janine, an idea that initially had the support of Jimmy’s Uncle Pang, for whom Jimmy used to deal drugs. When Jimmy learns just what kind of shady help Pang has planned, Jimmy has second thoughts. But Pang is not so easily put off, and he soon ignites family turmoil in his scheme to undermine Jimmy.

Number One Chinese Restaurant is very much a family novel; if characters are not related by blood, they have become part of the family by virtue of working for decades at the Duck House. As is common in family novels, marriages are troubled, siblings are at odds, and children are rebellious. Family members form and dissolve alliances, plot against each other, and come together when it counts — unless they don’t.

A good bit of the novel is also a love story involving elderly Duck House waiter Ah-Jack, whose wife has found a younger man, and Nan, whose husband lives in California, and who worries that her friendship with Ah-Jack might jeopardize her friendship with Ah-Jack’s wife. The Ah-Jack love triangle offers the novel’s best insights into how married life evolves over time, how love might endure even if a marriage doesn’t. Some insights are serious and others are not. This is Ah-Jack on the secret of a long marriage: “A strong marriage came when the wedded stopped trying to plumb their partner’s depths. Life became easier when one passed the years with an amiable stranger and not a mirror that reflected back all of one’s flaws.” I put that one in the pile of serious insights, but other readers might disagree.

Finally, as the title implies, Number One Chinese Restaurant is a restaurant novel, one that spends a bit of time in the kitchen, explaining how a well-oiled restaurant prepares meals efficiently and flawlessly, how waiters serve them without crashing into each other, and how owners and managers woo important customers. I don’t spend much time in the kitchen but I like to eat, and I’m a fan of restaurants and of restaurant novels. The nuts-and-bolts of operating a restaurant is a small but essential part of the story.

The combination of geriatric love story, family drama, and restaurant novel is a tough balance, but Lillian Li mixes the elements with light and dark humor, combining sweetness with sadness, love with backbiting, honesty with evil schemes. Li’s light touch makes Number One Chinese Restaurant a fun and easy read, but the story offers serious life lessons as memorable characters make difficult choices and uneasy compromises, confronting problems that are common to every family, whether or not they operate a restaurant.

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Blown by Mark Haskell Smith

Published by Grove Press/Black Cat on June 12, 2018

Bryan LeBlanc is a currency trader for an investment bank. Bryan has gone on vacation to the Dominican Republic, ditching his girlfriend and leaving his department manager, Seo-yun Kim, to handle the blowback when clients discover that money drawn on margin from their accounts has vanished into a bewildering network of transactions. Bryan has about $17 million to finance a comfortable lifestyle if he can avoid getting caught.

Neal Nathanson works for LeBlanc’s employer. Neal’s job is to track down investors who have skipped out on their margin calls. He’s been assigned to track down Bryan. Neal teams with Seo-yun to accomplish that mission. Seo-yun’s relationship with her irritating fiancé (he calls her forty times a day to discuss wedding plans) adds an additional layer of humor to this light crime story.

Bryan’s troubles compound as he makes his way to Grand Cayman, where his accomplice is holding his cash. His accomplice is untrustworthy, and a diminutive but well-endowed private detective from Curaçao named Piet Room has taken a break from seducing tourists to help Neal and Seo-yun track Bryan. Less scrupulous people on the scent of easy money, including a frustrated seascape painter, are also trying to find Bryan. When his situation becomes precarious, Bryan finds his personality changing in ways he doesn’t much like as he adapts to a dangerous lifestyle.

The novel actually begins at the end, with Neal adrift in a broken boat with no food or water until he’s rescued by Chlöe, who is sailing around the world solo to raise awareness of some disease she doesn’t care about. So what happened to Bryan and Seo-yun and the well-endowed Piet and the seascape painter who has stirred Neal’s erotic fantasies? It’s obvious from the beginning that something has gone wrong for someone. Maybe something has gone wrong for nearly everyone. The fun lies in following the well-paced plot until it catches up to the opening pages.

I would classify Blown as thriller light. It mixes comedy with suspense, and while the story is more chuckle-out-loud funny than belly-laugh funny, the comedy dominates. As thieves go, it is easy enough to like Bryan because he’s a decent guy despite his decision to gain freedom through larceny. It’s also easy to like Seo-yun and Neal, two wildly different characters who are both distracted by relationship problems as they chase after Bryan. All of the characters are flawed in ways that make them plausible human beings. With the exception of Neal, none are particularly virtuous — they tend to be enslaved by their temptations and then to be haunted by guilt — but that only enhances their amusement value. And a couple of the characters seem to be discovering themselves as the story moves forward. It’s nice to believe that it is never too late for that to happen.

Even though part of the ending is revealed at the novel’s beginning, the ending holds some surprises. Readers who want novels to reflect a better world than the one we inhabit might be disappointed in the novel’s outcomes, but the fates of the various characters come together in such unexpected and amusing ways that the story’s reminder that reality is frequently unjust doesn’t feel oppressive. At the same time, the ending suggests the possibility of redemption. Blown is a difficult balancing act, pitting good against evil and acknowledging all the gray area in between, but it finds a balance that is both satisfying and entertaining, all captured by the final line of dialog: “Everything is shit and everything is beautiful.”

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Sadness Is a White Bird by Moriel Rothman-Zecher

Published by Atria Books on February 13, 2018

As the title suggests, Sadness is a White Bird tells a sad story. It is a powerful story that addresses a young man’s moral dilemma when he is asked to give loyalty to one family (Israel) while disregarding his membership in a much larger family (humanity). The story’s power comes from the impossible situation its protagonist confronts when he is asked to choose between his best friends, who are clearly not his enemy, and the demands of the IDF, which insists that unarmed Palestinian protestors are dangerous enemies of Israel.

Transplanted from Pennsylvania to Israel, Jonathan considered himself a “discerning soldier” when he patrolled Palestinian villages with the IDF, trying not to adopt the bigoted mindset that characterized many of his fellow soldiers. Some of the soldiers with whom he patrols call him a “bleeding heart.” They belittle him for treating Palestinians decently and for trying to help his fellow soldiers understand their point of view. His missions are not always what he expected when he began his conscription, as when he helps quash a demonstration of dissenting Jews (with tear gas, as opposed to the bullets and grenades that are reserved for Palestinians).

As a teenager in Israel, Jonathan’s best friends were two Palestinians, Laith and his sister Nimreen, who had lived in Ohio and therefore shared with Jonathan the experience of living as young Americans. The story provides flashbacks to those times, narrated by Jonathan as he tells his story to an absent Laith. Jonathan predictably falls in love with Nimreen, and the scenes of their evolving intimacy and teenage desire are a bit sappy — the only weakness in a strong novel. From the tone of the letters and certain events in his past, however, it is not clear whether Jonathan has stronger feelings for Nimreen or for Laith. That question comes into focus later in the novel.

Jonathan’s flashbacks also educate the reader about Jonathan’s experiences with anti-Semitism and childhood bullying in Pennsylvania, and his training in the Israeli paratroopers, which the bullying may have motivated. The flashbacks also provide insight into the family background of Laith and Nimreen, and of a visit Jonathan made to his grandfather in Greece. The novel’s power is rooted in the oppression that each family has endured.

That power gains full force in the present, when Jonathan’s service in the IDF showcases his conflict between his loyalty to the soldiers with whom he serves and his belief that Palestinians have cause to protest Israel’s resistance to their call for freedom. Not surprisingly, before he is drafted, conflict arises between Nimreen and Jonathan because he will not join draft resisters who refuse to help Israel oppress Palestinians. Returning to the United States would be an easy way to resolve the dilemma, but Jonathan struggles to understand whether that would be an honorable solution. Jonathan is young and he craves the approval of his family (both his immediate relatives and the larger family of Jewish Israelis), not just Nimreen’s.

The novel points to the ways in which people are the same (which are fundamental) and the ways in which they are different (which are shaped by history and experience). The story suggests that understanding individual and cultural differences without losing sight of our commonality is the key to overcoming the hostility and violence that are bred by fears and prejudices and by honest differences of political opinion.

At the same time, the novel tests the adage “love conquers all.” It is possible for Jonathan and Nimreen to love each other, but can that love survive when Jonathan joins the IDF? The novel doesn’t back away from the question or answer it with a Pollyannaish view of love.

The story builds toward a dramatic moment that might turn friend against friend, but it builds drama upon a foundation of honesty rather than melodrama. The reader expects that moment to arrive, but the story’s climax is no less powerful for that. It is easy to admire Jonathan’s courage when he stands up to IDF propaganda and insists that the truth about the dramatic moment be known, despite the government’s attempt to fix blame on Palestinians for Jonathan’s misstep and to shelter the IDF from well-deserved criticism. At the same time, it is easy to sympathize with Jonathan, a young man who has no desire to be courageous or to make moral choices, who just wants his life to return to a simpler time when love and friendship were not imperiled by political conflict. Readers who appreciate novels that opt for a realistic portrayal of difficult struggles rather than a simplistic "we're good, they're bad" perspective will find much to admire in Sadness Is a White Bird.

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