26 August 2010

Kwei Quartey and John Le Carre

OMG as we like to write on the Intergoogle. Omigawd, it has been hot around here for what – two days? Now we have the cooling fog, the ocean breezes, and we laugh at the people melting in their huts in the real California, located just a few miles inland from here.

This week I was immersed in a murder mystery set in Ghana. “An absolute gem,” according to the Los Angeles Times. “Move over Alexander McCall Smith,” shouts Kirkus Reviews.

“Wife of the Gods” is new in paperback by first-time author Kwei Quartey. I do not know this author personally, but somehow he managed to send me an autographed copy inscribed “To Anthony Miksak, Wishing all that’s good.” How could I not read his book?

And I enjoyed it very much. The publisher promotes it for “fans of ‘The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency’ but then every new International Cozy is compared to McCall Smith’s novels set in Botswana, starring Precious Ramotswe. Precious by now has starred in a dozen books, solving many crimes and misdemeanors and improving the quality of life in her country.

Kwei Quartey has created an intriguing lead character, Detective Inspector Darko Dawson of the Criminal Investigations Department.

A beautiful young woman has been murdered in the local forest between the towns of Ketanu and Bedome. There are suspects, too many of them. We have rumors and indications, leads and wrong leads, witchcraft and faith healing, traditional practices, family secrets. Secrets that come back to slap you in the face if your name is Darko Dawson.

“Wife of the Gods” is one English translation of the age-old practice of Trokosi, and this practice is central to the story. Young girls are given by their families as wives to a local fetish healer. Once in his compound they never leave. According to the author, “The Ghanian government and NGOs... decry the practice... Traditionalists are in favor of the tradition and deny that slavery is involved.”

Also last week I ripped through another espionage thriller by the pseudonymous John Le Carre, titled “A Most Wanted Man.” It’s interesting to compare these two adventures, one a debut, the other maybe the 22nd in a revered pantheon of successful novels.

John Le Carre, David Cornwell on his British tax returns, explores his well-known urban territory – government sponsored spy craft, international espionage, faltering bureaucrats, do-good charities, a conflicted private banker, several individuals each with at least a spark of heroism. In “A Most Wanted Man” everything revolves around one mysterious Muslim boy, a refugee named Issa.

Issa has Chechen roots; he has been tortured in Russia. He can hardly speak, yet somehow he has sufficient moxie and enough cash to bribe his way to Hamburg, Germany, in search of his father’s inheritance. When he gains it, he gives it away. Various government agencies hunt and hound    him. Issa is a potential threat because his situation is so amorphous. Is he connected to terrorists, or simply a boy in search of his patrimony? No one, friend or enemy, succeeds in fully understanding him, and in a Le Carre novel that is a most dangerous situation.

The astonishing, surprising, ending reminded me of the slamming denouement of Le Carre’s novel “Absolute Friends.” Le Carre admires the power of anti-terrorism forces and abhors the assumptions that underlie their actions.

The lands in which these two authors place their novels  – forest paths or city streets – could not be more diverse. Yet the underlying landscape is very much the same. Few characters see things clearly and fewer still have the power to set things right. Everyone is flawed. No situation is free of secrets and doubts.

It is likely we will have many more mysteries from Kwei Quartey. His next, due in 2011, is titled “Children of the Street.” African culture and its contradictions will provide endless adventures.

Kwei Quartey was raised in Ghana. He trained as a doctor and settled in California. His biography notes that “when he was eight years old, Kwei began to write short novels that he bound by hand with colorfully illustrated cardboard covers.”

I doubt David Cornwell ever did that, but how would I know?

NOTES:

“Wife of the Gods” by Kwei Quartey. Random House paperback $15. ISBN 9780812979367.

“A Most Wanted Man” by John Le Carre. Pocket Books paperback $9.99. ISBN 9781416596097.



Kwei Quartey can be found here along with scarey music.

19 August 2010

Pondering E-Ink

Scenes from a brief vacation...

A young woman is deep into her Kindle, peering into its gray e-Ink screen while perched on a deck overlooking some of the most spectacular mountains in Canada’s Banff National Park. We’re chatting with a family nearby. “I still prefer ‘real’ books,” the main reader in the family declares. Her husband calls over to the Kindle person to ask if she likes her toy. “I love it, really love it!” she says.

I stand there holding a digital camera. A few years ago I would have had film  in it. Stuck between book and book machine. Which side am I on? Do there have to be sides? Can’t we all get along?

I admit it would be easy to carry Canada guidebooks in electronic form. Pro: Much less weight. Con: No color photos. Same with novels we brought along to read in between staring at beautiful lakes and receding glaciers.

I love electronic things, but I also like to touch the pages I’m reading, bend the spine, use an old receipt for a bookmark, write my name in it, give it away. I like those things about paper books a lot, but I remember how I once turned to my Random House Unabridged Dictionary every day, and now it’s simply a piece of dusty furniture on a lovely rotating wooden stand, cluttering my office.

On the way home to Mendocino we stopped for a visit at Bookshop West Portal in San Francisco. This cozy store is owned by Neal Sofman, an acquaintance from bookselling days.

When I first entered the biz, Neal Sofman was a big deal. With his partners he had a hand in bookstores in Cupertino, Larkspur, and San Francisco.

Four years ago Neal was forced by local conditions and partners wanting out to give up his last bookstore, A Clean Well Lighted Place for Books on Opera Plaza in San Francisco. He came out of the sale with enough money to open another bookstore in the city, this time in a great part of town and minus the messy partnerships.

He told a reporter at the time “I love the new neighborhood -- people keep sticking their heads in the door asking, 'When are you opening?' It's a mixture of old and young people, families, little children, teenagers. There are a number of restaurants right on our block. We have 300 square feet in the back of the store that we'll use for book clubs, workshops, and community activities.”

Neal’s dream is alive. On our brief visit we were gratified by everything we saw – the location, the selection, the intelligent woman working the counter, the many browsers, including a family with children.

Following the maxim “never leave a bookstore without a book” I picked up the last copy of “Helmet for My Pillow, From Parris Island to the Pacific,” a war memoir by Robert Leckie, first published in 1957. Leckie enlisted into the Marines shortly after Pearl Harbor, and fought in the Pacific through a number of horrific and eventually famous battles. He lived to become a prolific writer on US military history.

Leckie’s book was one of the main sources for the recent TV miniseries “The Pacific.”

As we walked down the street to our car we passed an empty storefront, windows whitewashed, a big FOR LEASE sign in the window. It had been a Waldenbooks outlet. Remember Waldenbooks?

Waldenbooks was an early bookstore chain, later absorbed by Borders. Along with Barnes & Noble and Amazon.com these behemoths at one time intended to take over the book business and drive out the independents.

Such things did happen, to a degree. Times got tough for many bookstores, and many disappeared. But now we are on the downslope of that decades-long wave. Many small bookstores survive and prosper. Barnes & Noble is for sale, their sales dinged by the rapid advance of electronic books and e-readers.

Who knows? Maybe the chain stores can’t stand stiff competition. Below-the -radar outfits like Bookshop West Portal thrive in neighborhoods everywhere. That story definitely is not over yet.


NOTES:

Bookshop West Portal, Your Neighborhood Bookstore

From their current bookmark:

“Books are keys to
     wisdom’s treasure;
Books are gates to
      lands of pleasure;
Books are paths
      that upward lead;
Books are friends.
      Come, let us read.

      Emilie Poulsson