Book of the Day Roundup: May 15-19, 2023
How to Clean a Fish
And Other Adventures in Portugal
Esmeralda Cabral
University of Alberta Press
Softcover $27.99 (320pp)
978-1-77212-655-6
Buy: Local Bookstore (Bookshop), Amazon
Covering her extended stay in Portugal, Esmeralda Cabral’s memoir How to Clean a Fish is infused with insights and sensuality.
Informed by the Portuguese concept of saudade (a wistful, transient sense of longing; “love and loss combined”), Cabral’s memoir discusses her immersion in the Portuguese language and the country’s culture over the course of eight months. She was more than a casual tourist, and her memories of growing up in the Azores before immigrating to Canada at age seven blend into her present experiences, becoming substantial to her efforts to resolve questions of identity. Surrounded by the first language she learned to speak and overcome with saudade, Cabral paused to take stock of how her experiences differentiated her from those who never left Portugal.
Honest, self-aware, and sentimental in the best sense of the word, the text recalls daily visits to the market for bread, vegetables, and fish; they were a complex testing ground for Cabral’s double identity, and also occasions for colorful experiences of food and architecture. Graceful conversations with others at the market, at bus stops, and in cafés served multiple purposes, revealing bits of Portuguese political history and small personal dramas over unfamiliar bureaucracies and passport snafus. Cabral also experienced the pressures of translating between cultures.
The book assumes a comfortable, even meandering pace, lingering on moments from the past and present and making ample time to taste the delicacies on offer. The question of whether Cabral is Portuguese, Canadian, or perhaps a combination of the two is explored at length. And for those who want a literal taste of Cabral’s experiences, twenty pages of recipes are included after her story’s conclusion.
Complex and introspective, the memoir How to Clean a Fish covers sweet travel adventures in Portugal.
MICHELE SHARPE (April 27, 2023)
Elixir
In the Valley at the End of Time
Kapka Kassabova
Graywolf Press
Softcover $18.00 (400pp)
978-1-64445-233-2
Buy: Local Bookstore (Bookshop), Amazon
Kapka Kassabova’s dreamy and meandering book Elixir covers her travels through the Mesta River region of Bulgaria in search of a cure for the pains of the human condition.
Examining its people, history, and natural beauty, this Mesta Valley-set book captures a blend of the past with the present. There, modern religion and ancient folk rituals come together, and the natural landscape offers an abundance of plants and herbs that are sought after for their medicinal properties. The mountains and waterways are home to several sacred sites too, known for healing and imparting wisdom and enlightenment.
Lush, illustrative prose vivifies this landscape, its ethereal quality highlighting the interconnectivity of ecology and humanity. Kassabova describes how people in small villages live in symbiosis with their environment, with foragers, healers, and mystics taking what they need and preserving the nature. Tourists from urban areas come in too, searching for ancient magic that will bring health and happiness and often destroying the very resources that they seek.
There is profound wisdom in this book. In a section discussing a sacred stone known as the Passage, Kassabova reflects on witnessed miracles, postulating that it is not the geography that matters so much as it is the psychology that allows people to believe in sacred places and to accept healing when they may not allow themselves the same grace in other circumstances. Though she does not state outright what the “elixir” is, the narrative makes it clear that it is not something external to human beings, but rather something that makes humanity, both individually and collectively, whole.
Elixir is the vibrant, beautiful story of a singular, remarkable place. It issues a call to reclaim the physical, emotional, and spiritual connection between humanity and the natural world.
CATHERINE THURESON (April 27, 2023)
Glassworks
Olivia Wolfgang-Smith
Bloomsbury Publishing
Hardcover $28.99 (368pp)
978-1-63557-877-5
Buy: Local Bookstore (Bookshop), Amazon
In Olivia Wolfgang-Smith’s emotive novel Glassworks, four generations struggle under the weight of unexpressed feelings, unsaid words, and unmet needs.
It starts with a bee. In 1910, heiress Agnes takes a renowned glass artist, Ignace, on a tour of the university arboretum, showing him the local flora and fauna that he will be recreating during his residency. He is stung by a honeybee; fascinated, he asks Agnes to sketch the bee’s final moments. She renders a full scene of life and death.
In 1938, Agnes sends that drawing and a glass replica of the bee to her son, Ed. It’s a pale substitute for parental regard. In 1986, with the drawing long ago destroyed, Ed bequeaths the glass bee to his child, Novak, quoting his mother: “surviving hardship enriches life and strengthens us to meet it.” In 2015, Flip finds the bee buried in her car—a lost gift from a heartbroken stranger; perhaps a new beginning.
Each era is rendered in distinctive terms. In the early 1900s, the book’s language is formal; it becomes more relaxed through the years until there is text speak in the mid-2010s. This is reflected in the characters too: Agnes is confident, even arrogant, in the beginning. Ed is nervous and insecure—a simple man with simpler tastes. Novak is resigned and protective. Flip is a screw-up who internalizes every negative ever spoken of her.
The emotional impact of each person’s choices reverberates through the years with intimate psychological depth––mirrored in the intricate descriptions of the glass models. The connecting threads stretch thin as the book progresses, but they do not snap. Always, there is a Novak at the center of the story, reaching with breathless anticipation for happiness, stability, comfort, and forgiveness.
Glassworks is a layered, lyrical family saga about love and determination.
DONTANá MCPHERSON-JOSEPH (April 27, 2023)
Outer Sunset
Mark Ernest Pothier
University of Iowa Press
Softcover $17.00 (266pp)
978-1-60938-883-6
Buy: Local Bookstore (Bookshop), Amazon
A retired English teacher learns to hope and love again while he helps his daughter face a devastating illness in Outer Sunset, Mark Ernest Pothier’s graceful, wise, and tender novel.
Jim retired early from teaching; he seems to have retired from life too. Neither a carpenter nor a gardener and unsure about his writing skills, he spends his days on the back porch of a rotting house on the western edge of San Francisco, reading stacks of books and drinking too much. His wife left three years before; she travels Europe with her new love. His two children live nearby, but their visits are rare.
Jim’s situation changes when his freelance videographer daughter, Dorothy, moves back home following a shattering cancer diagnosis. While caring for Dorothy, Jim connects, haltingly, with one of his daughter’s older friends, as well as with a devout Ukrainian immigrant whom his son is dating. At a gradual pace, he surrenders the fear and distrust that have been holding him back. And Dorothy, who has always put others first, learns to vocalize her desires.
There are poignant, keen insights into the shifting father-daughter relationship; as a team, both face mortality and uncertainty. These themes are weighty, but the story glitters with subtle humor and surprising turns too. Rich details capture late-1990s San Francisco, with its homey restaurants, beatnik North Beach bookstores, neon signs and aquariums in Chinatown, steep stone stairways, and stunning Golden Gate vistas. In the Outer Sunset neighborhood where Jim lives, the rolling fog, surf-flattened sand, and fleeting sunlight on the dune grass mirror the characters’ inner landscapes.
Beautiful and touching, Outer Sunset tells a stirring father-daughter tale about facing impending loss with faith, hope, forgiveness, and healing.
KRISTEN RABE (April 27, 2023)
The Great American Everything
Scott Gloden
Hub City Press
Softcover $16.95 (180pp)
979-888574012-8
Buy: Local Bookstore (Bookshop), Amazon
The stories of Scott Gloden’s collection The Great American Everything explore family relationships and social problems.
Anxious parents drill their five-year-old daughter on how to handle emergencies with frightening results. A man’s widowed, grieving brother-in-law adopts a baby under false pretenses. An unexpected pregnancy brings a variety of challenges for both the parents and their son. Dealing with the difficulties of modern life pushes each person to their emotional limits and does not always leave them in a better place. Often, their only rewards are a stronger sense of self as they move on to the next hurdle.
The stories highlight a variety of painful, complex problems—the pervasive fear of gun violence, a lack of accessible elder care, climate change, racial injustice, and sexual assault among them. But none of these issues exist in isolation. As the characters try to navigate each dilemma, they do so in concert with, or in opposition to, loved ones who have their own views about how they—and everyone else—should live. Solving problems creates new ones that are even tougher to address.
From the first story—“The Birds of Basra,” about a young woman struggling with the ethics of charging vulnerable people for a necessary service—to the last—“Tennessee,” in which a man tries to start a family as his mother slides deeper into a disturbing dementia—it is clear that life has no easy answers: there are only imperfect people making the best decisions they can in the moment. It is all too easy to relate to these characters as they are overwhelmed by forces bigger than themselves, but try to do what’s right anyway.
The Great American Everything is a collection of quiet stories about how large-scale problems fit into the realm of each individual’s existence.
EILEEN GONZALEZ (April 27, 2023)
Barbara Hodge
