Book of the Day Roundup: January 2-6, 2023
The Last Pomegranate Tree
Bachtyar Ali
Kareem Abdulrahman, translator
Archipelago Books
Softcover $22.00 (400pp)
978-1-953861-40-5
Buy: Local Bookstore (Bookshop), Amazon
In Bachtyar Ali’s novel The Last Pomegranate Tree, a man’s search for truth leads to deep revelations.
After more than two decades in prison, Muzafar has all but been forgotten. Only his old friend Yaqub knows he’s alive, and Yaqub wants to keep Muzafar imprisoned in his mansion, allegedly to protect him from what the world has become. But Muzafar, determined to find out what happened to his only son, escapes the mansion and encounters a world more terrible and more beautiful than he imagined.
Before his imprisonment, Muzafar was a Kurdish revolutionary, fighting for freedom and a better life. He emerges with a much clearer idea of what freedom means. Everyone he meets is haunted by the warfare that has long plagued the country. Muzafar plunges through layers of hatred, secrets, and bitterness to find the answers he seeks.
Muzafar’s experiences are interwoven with the fairy tale story of Muhammad the Glass-Hearted, whose unrequited love and premature death offer clues to his son’s fate. On his journey, Muzafar encounters many different worlds, each rich and vibrant in its own way: the bazaar where a boy who might be his son fought for a better life, the wise and endless desert of his former imprisonment, and the isolated tree that watches over the dreams of several young men whose fates are interwoven.
Despite the solitude and betrayal he endured, Muzafar chooses to be kind and loyal. These qualities strengthen him as he encounters more loss and hardship and embarks on a voyage from which he knows he may never return. For him, it is not the ending or even the journey that matters, but the way that his story can inspire others.
The Last Pomegranate Tree is a transcendent novel about the unbreakable connection between all living beings.
EILEEN GONZALEZ (December 27, 2022)
Your Hearts, Your Scars
Adina Talve-Goodman
Bellevue Literary Press
Softcover $17.99 (144pp)
978-1-954276-05-5
Buy: Local Bookstore (Bookshop), Amazon
Reflective and forthright, Adina Talve-Goodman’s posthumously published essay collection Your Hearts, Your Scars discusses chronic illness, the corporeal body, and the privilege of being alive.
Talve-Goodman was born with congenital heart issues, went into heart failure at the age of twelve, and was put on the transplant list at seventeen. Two years later, she received a new heart. She had eleven years of good health and no complications before being diagnosed with a rare lymphoma caused by her post-transplant immunosuppressant drugs. In her essays, she muses on disabilities, the fallibility of the human body, intimacy and vulnerability, faith, health, medicine, and love—and the intersections between these factors. Acutely aware that she is alive because someone else is not, she tries to untangle the threads of what this means while also remaining aware of how others in the transplant community cope.
Some of the essays represent separate drafts that were combined after Talve-Goodman’s death. As a rule, their prose is sharp and incisive, if occasionally overly self-aware. Talve-Goodman avoids self-pity and pandering for sympathy to relay events in matter-of-fact, wry terms. Still, despite their personal nature, the essays don’t betray much of Talve-Goodman’s personality. They are shared from a distance and seem almost wary of the impact that their words might have.
Illustrating the complex experience of organ transplantation and chronic illness, the essays of Your Hearts, Your Scars exist in the liminal spaces between health and sickness and between living and dying. They explore what it means to be alive, to have a body, and to come back from the brink of death.
JAIME HERNDON (December 27, 2022)
A Castle in Brooklyn
Shirley Russak Wachtel
Little A
Hardcover $24.95 (288pp)
978-1-66250-874-5
Buy: Local Bookstore (Bookshop), Amazon
The aftereffects of Nazi brutality form the foundation of Shirley Russak Wachtel’s novel A Castle in Brooklyn, which traverses six decades to address complex but universal themes, including grief, mourning, friendship, and betrayal.
Zalman and Jacob meet during World War II while hiding in the barn of a Polish woman who risks her life to keep them fed. After her farm is raided by the Gestapo, they escape. Their survival depends on trusting one another, and this realization cements their friendship. At the end of the war, they stick together, first in a displaced person’s camp and later as emigres to the United States. Zalman ends up in Minnesota, Jacob in Brooklyn.
The men reunite after Jacob marries Esther, the daughter of a wealthy New York City realtor whose stock-in-trade is renting apartments to newly-arrived immigrants. Jacob begins working for EMI Realty, learning to leverage the postwar housing market. Now wealthy, he dreams of building a laughter-and-light-filled house for his bride. Fantasy becomes reality when his father-in-law gives him land in Brooklyn. Elated, Jacob wastes no time in inviting Zalman to help him execute the construction project. After all, Zalman’s dad had been an architect before the war and taught his young son how to fabricate a building.
The unfolding drama brings Esther, Jacob, and Zalman into an intense friendship that is colored by the men’s wartime experiences. The situations that arise collide with the social milieu of the 1970s. For Esther, this includes exposure to feminism. As each character grows, a vibrant family saga unfolds, though one that includes several extraneous plot lines and characters.
A Castle in Brooklyn is an impressive debut novel that illustrates the many ways that the Holocaust continues to impact contemporary Jewish life; a deeply felt hatred of fascism gives the novel its heft and lasting relevance.
ELEANOR BADER (December 27, 2022)
In the Time of Our History
Susanne Pari
John Scognamiglio Books
Softcover $16.95 (384pp)
978-1-4967-3926-1
Buy: Local Bookstore (Bookshop), Amazon
Susanne Pari’s In the Time of Our History is a sprawling story of loss and healing in the immigrant experiences of an Iranian American family.
Sisters Anahita and Mitra are each other’s opposites. Anahita, the favorite, is married with children and lives according to Iranian traditions. Mitra, the rebel, embraces her American identity and strikes out on her own. Their loving but contentious relationship is cut short when Anahita and her two children are killed in a car accident.
Estranged from her father and with a complicated relationship to her mother, Mitra returns home for the one-year anniversary of Anahita’s death. As the family gathers in remembrance, the lies woven to keep the family’s honor intact are exposed. Protective of her younger sister even after she has died, Mitra embraces her defiant role to find the truth, but her actions threaten to shatter her family by forcing confrontations that are long overdue.
This vibrant story is told in intricate, heartfelt detail. Mitra and Anahita’s Iranian American extended family is haunted by the trauma of exile. They live under pressure and face culture clashes and generational confrontations. Iran is a constant presence in everyone’s minds, and life becomes a balancing act between multiple identities, languages, and value systems. People are torn between the old country and the new. A parallel, complementary story about a mother and daughter in exile from Iran further reveals the challenges posed by the patriarchy to women of all ages.
In the Time of Our History is a heartfelt story about a family whose members seek healing while in exile.
ERIKA HARLITZ KERN (December 27, 2022)
Container Magic
Spellcraft Using Sachets, Bottles, Poppets & Jars
Charity L. Bedell
Llewellyn Publications
Softcover $17.99 (240pp)
978-0-7387-7261-5
Buy: Local Bookstore (Bookshop), Amazon
Charity L. Bedell’s Container Magic makes crafting spells in self-contained receptacles easy.
First covering the types of containers to use, with details on how to clean, fill, and dispose of them, the book takes a practical approach to magic. There are a variety of spells; each includes a list of materials and instructions, including chants and guidance on working with energy. A resource section follows this work, with lists of herbs, crystals, and other curios and their appropriate uses, as well as recipes for oils and incense.
The spells in the book are creative. There are money jars and healing poppets as well as spells made with clear glass; there are plastic balls for protection, boosting wellness, or getting rid of bullies. There are spells in boxes and tins, as with a spell to banish fears that utilizes a cardboard box and a magical tin to stop gossip. The variety is inspiring, showing the many possibilities of container magic.
The book contains ethically questionable hexes and curses, too, as with one to harm a relationship and another to cause bad luck. Though there is not a significant discussion of ethics, Bedell states in the introduction that such workings need to be used as a last resort, and that the energy from such work can and will backfire on the practitioner.
Though a novice could follow these instructions, the book will be of the most use to those with previous experience with working magic. The ability to raise and channel energy into an object is crucial, as is the ability to release excess energy. For those with this foundation, the book includes a wealth of useful information, pulling from systems including witchcraft and Hoodoo for maximum accessibility.
Container Magic is a thorough introduction to crafting spell containers with an impressive array of spells to learn from.
CATHERINE THURESON (December 27, 2022)
Barbara Hodge
