Red Weather by Pauls Toutonghi

Book Review by Zinta Aistars



# Hardcover: 256 pages
# Publisher: Shaye Areheart Books, 2006
# Price: $23.00
# ISBN: 0307336751



We Latvians are a small nation, but oh, we are a proud people! We are a nation beaten and battered by many wars over many hundreds, even thousands of years, but our culture and life sense still thrive: the Latvian language is one of the oldest in existence today, still actively used. Perhaps that is our greatest source of pride, then: we are survivors.

When Pauls Toutonghi's new novel, Red Weather, came upon the literary scene, I was greatly pleased. I've been an avid reader in both languages - Latvian and English - since earliest childhood, but however many good books I read about the war and later experiences of Latvians immigrating to other countries and cultures, it was rare to come across a worthy tome in English. History books, yes, but far more rare, a good attention-grabbing novel that I could proudly share with non-Latvian friends.

Now, here's Pauls. With one Latvian parent, it is my understanding he has grown up in the Milwaukee area, active in the Latvian community and, having visited Latvia, is well-acquainted, one would suppose, with the culture and something of the nation's history. For these reasons, I read the novel with high expectation and excitement.

Pauls' writing abilities do not disappoint. Still quite young, he has already accrued an impressive publishing history, and has won the Pushcart Prize. His descriptions are lively, his storyline pulls us along, his sense of humor is intact.

And yet. The further I read, the more I realized, no, this was not going to be the book that I would pass on to Latvians I know, or to non-Latvians I'd like to invite a little more intimately into my multi-cultural world. The novel works as an entertaining read for non-Latvians, perhaps, but for those who do know the history and culture, well, not so much. I think my sense of humor is healthy, but I can't help feeling, for instance, that describing Latvians visiting the United States as being so dense as to put ketchup on every possible food, even bananas, craving to taste the American life, is taking the joke into the much less fun realm of ridicule. Or the Latvian mother as so eye-rollingly lacking in self-awareness as to walk Milwaukee streets wearing a Pabst hardhat with a beer can on it as if she were wearing a Parisian fashion statement. Surely not. I cringed in embarrassment. Humor is often built on slapstick and exaggeration, but would those who have no other knowledge of Latvians, perhaps never will have any other exposure than this novel, think this is what it means to be a Latvian? Bumbling fools?

Perhaps even more worthy of remark are some historic inaccuracies. Although this is a fictional work, even fiction must keep its feet firmly on factually solid ground before branching into fantasy. One such example is the allusion to Latvia's president, Karlis Ulmanis, and his attempt to escape to Finland during the Soviet invasion of World War II (see page 166). In fact, President Ulmanis held his place, broadcasting over the radio waves to the nation even as the Soviet tanks crossed the Russian border, keeping down the panic and requesting all to remain in their places, thus saving many Latvian lives. He was taken by force from his office by the occupying army, and was never seen alive again. Educated guesses are that he was deported to Siberia, where he died in a Gulag (concentration camp), but his body has never been found.

Having finished the novel, wondering at how very different the author's experience of his Latvian roots and culture were from mine, indeed from anyone I have known with Latvian roots and having gone through the immigrant experience, I wanted to think - hey, there's always the exception to the rule. If by 1989, when this story is set, any Latvian immigrant I or my family knew had established themselves in relative financial security (the fictional Balodis family still lived in squalor), had attained some measure of their new country's education and achieved something of their own immigrant American dream, then the Balodis family was certainly a lone exception to the rule. Nor could I imagine my own father, or fathers of my friends, being so easygoing about the political lines the young man in this novel, Yuri (Juris), crossed in his lovelorn relationship with a socialist girl (my own, and dare I say any typical, Latvian father, would have gone through the roof, to put it very, very lightly).

As a reality check, I shared Red Weather with my parents, who shared it with several of their friends. Their reactions were the same. They expressed admiration for the author's skill, but also expressed a pained disappointment in the skewed image of Latvian immigrants to the U.S. The image the book leaves is of a people who are gullible, not particularly industrious, and rather dim-witted.

An opportunity lost. My subjective opinion, but I'm sure shared by more than a few of my countrymen and women.

The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

Book Review by Zinta Aistars




# Hardcover: 560 pages
# Publisher: Knopf Books for Young Readers, 2006
# Price: $16.95
# ISBN: 0375831002


How rare the times that we read something entirely new and unique! It has been said that there are no new stories to tell, and I will not argue that. There really are only a few novel plots, although it is in our endless variations that we set ourselves apart as writers and word-artists, perhaps also as readers, in the manner and voice in which we tell the story. This is true for Markus Zusak in his creative storytelling of The Book Thief.

The story is one of the oldest ones told: the narrator is mankind's friend/nemesis, Death, ancient as Time itself, and the scenes Death (not without compassion and not without wry humor) narrates for us are those of human suffering and endurance, an eventual overcoming of conflicts and obstacles, a story of love pitted against hate, of the victory of the best in all of us over the worst in any of us. Zusak's main characters are a 9-year old girl, Liesel Meminger, her companion and young partner in crime, Rudy, and a Jewish refugee hiding in the basement of the house where she lives, herself something of a refugee in Nazi Germany during WWII. A wide range of secondary characters fill in all gaps and keep us reading with fascination, e.g. Liesel's adoptive family, especially her cruel and ascerbic foster mother, Rosa, who on occasion cracks to show a bit of humanity; the major's deeply depressed wife, who quietly allows Liesel to "steal" her books; Liesel's young comrades, and many more.

It is hard to pinpoint what it is, precisely, that makes Zusak's work so unique. But I knew it, felt it, instantly. Voice, yes. Style. A few experimental approaches in his storytelling, such as illustrations inserted in the novel with all errors present, just as Max wrote the text and drew the pictures for his young friend, Liesel. Death's narration is unique. There are many such details that all come together to form a story worth reading, worth hearing, worth understanding. It is the story of Liesel, a spunky little book thief, who does far more than steal good books. In our smallest, we often find our greatest heroes.

Highly recommended.

Self-Made Man: One Woman's Journey Into Manhood and Back by Norah Vincent

Book Review by Zinta Aistars



# Hardcover: 304 pages
# Publisher: Viking, 2006
# Price: $24.95
# ISBN: 0670034665




Few things fascinate us, all of us, more than the opposite gender. Surely that is the main draw of Norah Vincent's Self-Made Man, the nonfictional story about this gay female journalist who spends extended time disguised as a man in order to learn more about that gender. To see the world from and through a man's eyes, or at least as closely to his view as possible.

I expected to be fascinated. I was. Vincent begins with a chapter that describes how she accomplished this feat, then adds chapters on friendship (she joins a bowling league), sex (she delves into the baser side of the male psyche and visits strip clubs), love (she dates a long string of very varied women with surprising results), life (she joins a Catholic monastery), work (pounding the pavement as an aggressive salesman), and, finally, self (she joins a men's therapy group and accompanies them on a retreat to get more in touch with their emotions). Her conclusion, if we are not to give too much away, is that she is most happy being a woman, thank you.

Vincent's journey of discovery begins with a revelation that made me almost gasp YES! that's exactly how it is! the very first time she dresses as a man and walks the same street she has so many times walked as a woman:

"As a woman, you couldn't walk down those streets invisibly. You were an object of desire or at least semiprurient interest to the men who waited there, even if you weren't pretty...

That was it. That was what had annoyed me so much about meeting their gaze as a woman, not the desire, if that was ever there, but the disrespect, the entitlement. It was rude, and it was meant to be rude, and seeing those guys looking away deferentially when they thought I was male, I could validate in retrospect the true hostility of their former stares."

I have no doubt most any woman can relate to this. It is nearly impossible to describe to our brothers in humanity just how this feels. Vincent, switching places from one side of the gender fence to the other in this manner, does it beautifully.

Perhaps most difficult to read is the chapter on Vincent making the strip club rounds with her male pals. I have often pondered why men seem so mesmerized with the images seen in porn, on street corners, and the glossy, airbrushed and objectified images presented in media, even while beautiful real women stand available beside them. Vincent gives insight:

"But as I began to understand more about the shame that arose in men from the need to visit places like this, and the undoubted shame that arose in the dancers for having to work in them, I thought I began to understand something more about the kind of woman that becomes a sex object in the eyes of men. A lot of women have asked themselves why so many men are so fond of modern porn stars and centerfolds, women who aren't real women, whose breasts are fake, whose hair is bleached into straw or perversely depilated, whose faces are painted thick, and whose bodies have been otherwise altered by surgery or diet to conform with doll-like exactitude to something that isn't found in nature. Why, I had so often wondered, didn't men want real women?..."

Vincent describes what these men really want, and I will not quote here because of the language used (appropriately), but the conclusion is that men do not want witnesses to their basest behavior. And so, writes Vincent:

"A real woman is a mind, and a mind is a witness, and a witness is the last thing you need when you're ashamed. So f--ng a fake, mindless hole is what you need. The faker the better."

Crude, but apt. When I checked this section with a male friend, he reluctantly agreed.

But Vincent is not on a mission to degrade the male gender. Dare I say, the male gender does so well enough by themselves, certainly in these episodes. Yet there is another side, and Vincent equally well taps into the rest of the story, rounding it out. She writes of male bonding with a tenderness that never loses its masculinity (and continues on how real women love real, read imperfect, men -- agreed!). She exposes the suffering of men when they are denied their father's approval and warmth. She speaks of the injustices women sometimes throw on men at first encounter, judging them in as fully an objectified manner as men judge women. She chides women for often bringing on male hostility themselves when assuming an emotional superiority that closes down all communication. Finally, however, she states that both genders are hurting, lonely, longing to connect, and fault can be found, just like quality, in both sides.

This is not a journey to be missed. Perhaps I can't claim great surprise in reading any of Vincent's revelations. But I was given an insight into the opposite gender that was as open as any I've encountered. This author had no mission but to be a good journalist and see what she could see, record what she observed.

I recommend this book highly to both men and women. It is great and much needed fodder for discussion and learning. Agree or disagree with Vincent's conclusions (I didn't always agree), nevertheless it has tremendous value for open communication.