Marie Benedict's Carnegie's Maid and Why the Philanthropist Started Paying for Libraries

Libraries are among my most favourite places, and I've long been curious about Andrew Carnegie who financed hundreds of them  in the US, Canada and abroad at the turn of the 20th century.  (The photo is of the original Carnegie Library in Walla Walla WA where I got my first library card, age 5 or 6.) When looking for a good biography of him, I came across another library treasure that isn't quite a "true" story, but an historical novel that givdes a possible explanation of why the industrialist gave away his fortune.  The book is Carnegie's Maid by Marie Benedict, a prolific novelist who specializes in writing historical novels about women on the edges of great things.

 

Her books include novels based on the lives of  Mileva Marić (The Other Einstein, 2016), Hedy Lamarr (The Only Woman in the Room, 2019), Clementine Churchill (Lady Clementine, 2020), Belle da Costa Greene (The Personal Librarian, with Victoria Christopher Murray 2021), and Rosalind Franklin (Her Hidden Genius, 2022).  

 

I have some experience in trying fill in the gaps in the lives of historical figures.  One of my first books was about Robert Nelson, a doctor and anglophone Patriot in the Canadian Rebellions of 1837-38. His francophone colleagues were the one who were remembered when I wrote The Words on the Wall: Robert Nelson and the Rebellion of 1837 in the 1990s, and I wanted to set the record straight.  I did a lot of research in archives and libraries, and the book has 198 footnotes. But to make his story readable and believable, I felt compelled to invent some events and characters that fill in Nelson's emotional life. Therefore, I'm  on Benedict's side when it comes to allowing a little real fiction into novels about the lives of "real" people.

 

So far I've read two other of her books, the ones about Hedy Lamarr and Belle da Costa Greene, and been swept away by all three.  Benedict begins with solid information about her heroines, and then does some imagining of things that might have happened to them.  In Carnegie's Maid she clearly indicates that the person is made up, but she also explains why she thinks that someone in Carnegie's life inspired him to make his generous gifts to so many towns although she's equally clear that no one knows for sure.  Whatever, the result is a very good read.

 

 

 

Seven Moons of Maali Almeida: One of the Few Books I Couldn't Finish

  

When I started this exercise some weeks ago, I intended to talk about books I didn't like, as well as ones I did.  This is not supposed to be a place to do nothing but boost books, becaues there are some  out there that don't deserve a boost, in my opinion.  So this time it's the turn of The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida by Shehan Kuranatilaka.  The book was one of the New York Time's 100 Notable Books of 2022 and was on NPR's  Books We Loved list  in 2022.  What is more one of the particpants in the book discussion group I was leading at the time was extremely enthusiastic about it.  "It's so funny," she said. 

 

I didn't think so!

 

Here's the Goodreads resumé:

"Colombo, 1990. Maali Almeida, war photographer, gambler and closet queen, has woken up dead in what seems like a celestial visa office. His dismembered body is sinking in the serene Beira lake and he has no idea who killed him. In a country where scores are settled by death squads, suicide bombers and hired goons, the list of suspects is depressingly long, as the ghouls and ghosts with grudges who cluster round can attest. But even in the afterlife, time is running out for Maali. He has seven moons to contact the man and woman he loves most and lead them to the photos that will rock Sri Lanka."

 

Ordinarily I'm not bothered by a book which  begins with mysteries, where you aren't sure at all where the author is leading you, where you have to figure out what the main themes are, what the drama will be.  But this one made very little sense to me, and I found much of what was happening in the first chapters extremelyi distasteful.  Perhaps I'm too bound the culture I live in to appreciate the irony, to enjoy the satire. Whatever, this is one of the rare books I had to put aside.  One of my rules is to  give the author at least  50 pages to show me what he or she is doing, so I kept reading until I'd passed that landmark. But then I returned it to the library, glad I hadn't bought it.

 

Needless to say, I didn't put the book on the roster of the book club that season even though that one member (whose opinion I usually agreed with) urged me to.  However, I would love to hear from anyone else who found the book a good read: please give me your reasons.   

Kim Thuy and Caroline Vu: Two Very Different Novels by Vietnamese-Canadian Women

Last week the  featured  book was written by an American who fought in Vietnam.  This week let me draw your attention to two books written by women who were born in Vientam, endured part of the American war there, and then ended up in Montreal. Caroline Vu is ten years older than Kim Thuy, but both have written stunning books of life in war torn Vietnam and the immigrant experience in North America.  Both have several to their credit, but  Thuy's debut novel Ru is my favourite of her oeuvre, while the only one of Vu's that I've read so far is her latest, Catinat Boulevard.

 

Vu left  the country when she was 11: her mother, a doctor, was able to get her and her sisters to the US, and to start a new life there.  Thuy was about the same age when her family leflt, but by then Saigon had fallen.   She and her family were among the thousands of "boat people" who fled, often in small boats and always to a future that was dreadfully uncertain. Both women are well-educated: Vu is a family doctor, and Thuy is trained as a lawyer.  Each also is fluent in English, French and Vietnamese: Thuy writes for publication in French and Vu, in English.  Each has two children, and seemingly masses of energy, as witness the number of projects they have successfully undertaken.

 

It's a truism that there are many ways to tell a story, and Vu's and Thuy's stories certainly bear that out.  Despite their similarities, the manner in which each tells hers is strikingly different.  Vu's is sprawling--470 pages--and covers the lives of two women who are school friends in the last days of the old Vietnam, plus the life of the son which one of them has with an African-American GI.   It begins in the 1960s and ends in 2020.  Along the way it deals with pedophilia, begging children, racism, Agent Orange, Communist re-education. and much more.

 

Thuy's book, on the other hand, is spare and poetic.  The trials that the family (modelled on her own, it seems) go through are harrowing, but the message at the end is upbeat.  The family may have to work in the fields in Quebec for a spell, but they have unquestionably found a better place for themselves.

 

Which is better? Hard to say, depends in part on how you like your fiction--long narratives, or short distillations of experience.  Perhaps the best thing for you is to read both and decide...