The Song of the Jade Lily by Kirsty Manning

This long  and beautifully constructed novel bounces back and forth between Vienna in the late 30s and early 40s, Melbourne 2016, and Shanghai (also in the late 30s and 40s).

It is the story of a friendship between a beautiful Shanghai girl, Li, and a Jewish refugee, Romy. They meet in Shanghai in 1939. The two become instant best friends  who explore densely populated Shanghai “Paris of the East”. While author Manning insists that it is a work of fiction, it is nevertheless a well researched historical novel. As she explains in the author’s notes, “Shanghai had opened its doors to more than twenty thousand refugees fleeing Europe, at a time when no other country would.”

The story begins in Vienna as Romy, 12, is literally dragged along by her parents through a scene of chaos , smoke and flying glass everywhere as the Jewish ghetto is raised in what would come to be known as Kristallnacht. Both of Romy’s brothers are dragged off by Nazi soldiers only one of whom lives long enough to be sent to a concentration camp.

Without telling too much of this novel, suffice it to say that Romy and her father eventually escape Vienna by fleeing first to Italy which was not yet conjoined with Germany, and then by boat to Shanghai. Romy’s father is a doctor and soon finds employment in the Jewish hospital in Shanghai and Romy begins her exciting relationship with Li. The third strand of the story takes the reader to Melbourne in 2016.  Alexandra has recently left London and a relationship she had thought would culminate in marriage and rushes to Melbourne to be with her dying grandpa, Wilhelm and her grandmother Romy. 

The author takes the readers through the four sections (or con cessions)  of Shanghai: the International Concession, the ghetto where Jews are permitted to live and work,, the zone controlled by the Japanese, and the French concession full of luxury hotels and shops. Manning always takes the time to describe in detail the huge variety of food and flowers to be seen there. Knowing so very little of Shanghai, and nothing of its tolerance of Jewish refugees during the war, I was stunned by the descriptions of this magical city.

The character of Li, while fictional, is based on a very famous Shanghai singer; Li lives in a luxurious hotel that she and Romy come to know in great detail. Theirs is one of  several close friendships between female characters in the book. Another is that between Romy and Nina, both Jewish refugees who end up in Melbourne.

Alexandra wants to learn of the histories of her grandparents and after the death of Wilhelm, her grandfather, she goes to Shanghai  and begins her search to uncover their stories. 

While I was writing a story about refugees and how China opened their doors and hearts to the Jews, Australia was locking up refugees who attempted to come there by boat. Why haven’t the lessons of  history taught us to treat people better?

Besides introducing me to Shanghai and is treatment of Jews during World War II, the author also discovers many other interesting bit of war history. 

I also discovered that before 1940 it was possible to be released from a concentration camp if you had a valid passport, visa, permit to take up residency in another country, and proof of transport. Such release was always subject to the prisoner leaving Germany within a limited time. The time frame and the documents needed varied from case to case.

As you read this lovely if often frightening book, I think you might begin to hear echoes of the song of the Jade Lily, almost able to see the beautiful Li as she sang for her enthralled audiences. It is obvious that the author has been captured by the sights and sounds of Shanghai, and she manages to give her readers a window into that world.

One strand of the novel I have not touched on is that of the relationship between traditional Chinese medicine and mainstream medicine. Both Romy and her mother had a keen interest in Chinese medicine as does author Manning, seeing them as adjuncts rather than opposites. 

Every Thing You Are by Kerry Anne King

I want to talk to you this morning about a delightful book about a luthier (maker of violins and other stringed instruments), his granddaughter, and a cello with a soul.

When Braden Healy’s mother takes him to a violin shop to buy him a violin, a cello across the room beckons him, speaks to him, and so begins a love affair that will last a lifetime.

Ophelia MacPhee, Phee for short, is eighteen years old and has been working in her grandfather’s shop, MacPhee’s Fine Instruments, for many years when he calls her to his apartment to give her her birthday present. She expects, perhaps, her grandmother’s emerald ring or something related to the luthier business. Instead, her grandfather tells her he is giving her the business. With his attorney present as a witness, he induces Phee to sign a contract saying she will take over the business.

I Ophelia Florence MacPhee, being of sound mind and purpose, do hereby swear a sacred oath  to accept and discharge all obligations, tangible and intangible, related to the post of luthier.

Although uneasy about signing and wondering about the intangible obligations, she signs the document . Her grandfather explains he is dying of cancer and that necessitates the rush to have her sign.

The eccentric grandfather has, of course, sold many fine instruments over the years,  and in a few cases has insisted the purchaser enter into an agreement to play the instrument until his/her death, and then the instrument is to be returned to the luthier. ‘A forever home, you understand. A marriage. This cello is not a thing to be acquired and cast aside. And when you die and the bond is broken, your next of kin will bring the cello back to me. Here”

Braden Healey is only twelve when he enters into this bond, and while the luthier thinks him a bit young to enter into such a bond, he remarks only that the cello has spoken. “She is the boss of us, yes? Not the other way.”

If the bond is broken, there will be dire consequences.

And so the scene is set, Phee must keep her oath concerning this cello and a handful of other instruments sold under similar contracts. Unfortunately, many years later, when Branden is a successful cellist with a seat on the Seattle symphony, his hands are severely frostbitten as he attempts to save his brother-in-law who has fallen through a hole in the ice while ice-fishing.

When Braden can no longer play the cello, he sinks into a depression and into alcoholism.  On several occasions, Phee meets with Braden to exhort him to return to playing the cello. He laughs ruefully, displaying his hands which he can use for day to day things, but which can no long feel the strings of the cello.

The author is thinking of her character Braden (and others) when she opens her novel with this quote from Nietzsche, Without music, life would be a mistake.

Adding to the tragic life of Braden, his wife and son are killed in a car accident, and he returns to his home to try to salvage a relationship with his seventeen-year-old daughter. She is also a cellist, but gives it up after her mother and brother die. While both she and her father hear cello chords echoing in their lonely house, neither plays the lovely instrument as it languishes in its corner. It is every bit as important as a character in this novel as the others I have mentioned. Kerry manages to convince me that the cello does have a soul, its voice rising and falling as the events in the novel occur.

The granddaughter, Phee, was there the day that Braden signed the contract, entered into the oath, and when he returns home, she Is diligent in her attempts to get Braden to honor his contract. She believes in the curse her grandfather has put on Braden should he break his bond. Slowly, Phee falls in love with this boy-become –man, and their relationship adds a sweetness to the story, as does a budding relationship between Allie, Braden’s daughter, and Ethan, a boy who dates wild girls and rides a motorcycle.

Stars and boys like Ethan are great at a distance. Too close, and they’ll burn your wings and dump you into the sea., a lesson she learned both from the story of Icarus and watching the dramas of other girls who have dared to fly too close to the sun.

In addition to really interesting talk about music and fine instruments, this is a compelling story. I played Bach’s marvelous cello suites as I read it, and soon, like Braden and Allie and Phee, I began to hear cello chords throughout the day. Braden refuses to talk about the particulars of his brother-in-law’s death in the frozen lake, and this mystery adds one more layer to a really captivating tale.

Will Braden play again, and what will be the dire consequences if he does not? These and other questions await your reading of this splendid novel.

The Dutch House by Ann Patchett

For almost all of my reading life, I have tended to prejudge pop novels and pop novelists. Certainly, that prejudice has saved me from reading many bad or so-so novels, but it has also led me to miss some real gems. Today,  I am going to say a few words about two 2019 novels. Although I don’t intend to reveal much of the storylines, I want at least to recommend these books. The first has been on the best seller lists for quite a long time. It is a novel about a house, The Dutch House, and the family who lived there in a period spanning five decades. I have shortchanged Patchett before; it took me several years to get around to reading (and reviewing) her fine novel, Bel Canto and almost as long to read The Magician’s Assistant.

A man who has been poor all of his life suddenly comes into a lot of money, and one of the first things he does is buy a house he thinks to be the grandest he has ever seen. He buys if for his beloved wife, but she is uncomfortable in the house from the beginning and comes soon to hate it. Time and time again, she leaves the house and her two children Danny and Maeve, and  stays away for greater and greater lengths until finally she leaves for good. The two children are inseparable, only comfortable in the world when they are together. Maeve attempts to be the lost parent for her younger brother, after they are forced out of the home when their father dies and leaves his entire estate to his second wife. The characters of the two children are very well fleshed out by Patchett, although their father, Cyril Conroy, is more a shadow than a fully developed character. The one provision Cyril had included in his will for his son Danny was a fund to pay for his education including any graduate program he enters. Clever Maeve devises a plan to keep her brother in school for many years, until he receives a medical degree, thus keeping a least some of their father’s money from the merciless stepmother.  

I did not find this novel to be particularly important as a socio-political statement, but since the time span includes the Viet Nam war and the political turmoil in this country right up to the present, Patchett does provide some insights into the separation of rich and poor and a running commentary on political events. Still, the most important relationship described is that between sister and brother. The scenes between them are touching and very believable and explore what I would call a kind of emotional incest.

The second book, Alice Hoffman’s The World That We Knew, is a wonderfully researched book about World War II and the Holocaust. I have been somewhat put off by Hoffman’s inclusion of magic in her early hugely popular novels like Practical Magic and The Rules of Magic, and magic enters this novel as well, but in a way I found much less intrusive. 

In the world that we knew, Hanni Kohn saw what was before her. She would do whatever she must to save those she loved, whether it was right or wrong, permitted or forbidden. 

Hanni’s doctor husband has already been murdered in a riot outside his Jewish hospital when the reader is introduced to the surviving members of the family. Hanni knows she must do something to protect her beautiful 12 year old daughter from the Nazi regime, but how can she protect her? While Hanni is able to prevent a sexual assault on her daughter by a Nazi soldier, she does so only by killing the assailant, and knows that the consequences will be dire.  In a desperate move, Hanni takes her daughter, Lea, to a renowned rabbi pleading with him to help hide her daughter and to get her out of Germany. It is the rabbi’s daughter, Ettie, who steps in to save Lea, and she does so by creating a golem. “A golem…may look human, but it has no soul. It is pure and elemental and it has a single goal, to protect. Ettie explains that the incantations must be exactly right, and that if she makes a mistake, it will mean instant death to her. She finally agrees to create the golem in spite of the great risk, but only if Lea buys identification papers and a train ticket for Ettie’s little sister, so that she, too, can escape from Berlin.

The rest of the novel describes the journey of Lea and Ava (the golem) as they escape to France and then through a long series of events that will get them to a place where they can join the French resistance and fight the Nazi occupation.

It is very clear that this book was a labor of love for Alice Hoffman, and in my estimation the most serious of her many successful novels. The bibliography at the back of the book evidences just how through Hoffman’s research was in creating this novel. 

Lea and Ettie’s life paths are entwined from the moment Ettie creates Ava and begins the long journey towards the south of France. There are so many wonderful and believable characters created by Hoffman as Lea and Ava continue their escape and find ways to enter into the fray, and to help oher Jews to escape Nazi rule.

So two hugely popular novels that deserve to be read.