October 2016From the Committee Day on the GravelAnother successful Day on the Gravel for the 3rd year in a row! The weather was cooperative. It was terrific to see so many adults and children out and about and enjoying the fantastic local music. Thank you all those who supported it.

Council meeting 9am next WednesdayThere is a council meeting on Wednesday October 26th at which we hope to hear plans for the library. We will immediately inform our membership as soon as we know anything. We hope to see you at the Remembrance Day talk on November 10th at 2pm.

FRIENDS OF ARMIDALE DUMARESQ LIBRARY

NEWSLETTER

Book review

The Discreet Hero Mario Vargas Llosa

Mario Vargas Llosa is the author of a significant body of fiction works, and was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2010. This book was first published in 2013, and was translated into English in 2015.

The novel is set in present day Peru, and the story has two main strands. Felicito Yanaque, owner of a transport business, receives blackmail letters signed by a spider. He feels that to give in to blackmail would be to betray the memory of his father who said ‘never let anybody walk all over you, son.’ Don Ismael Carrera, the wealthy owner of an insurance company decides to marry his one time maidservant, thereby upsetting his twin sons who wish him dead. Don Rigoberto agrees to act as a witness to the wedding, getting involved in the controversy.

These men are stubbornly determined to follow their chosen courses of action with varying results. They are the “discreet heroes” of the title.

The author touches on integrity, loyalty and religion, as well as the relationship between fathers and their sons. The book is beautifully written and abounds in humour, with satirical views about the political and economical systems of the country. An unusual technique of blending together past and present conversations in the one passage is frequently used, and this acts as a mechanism for flashbacks.

This novel is an excellent read. It’s funny and enjoyable but has serious underlying themes. With a lesser writer it might not have worked but it’s a story of impeccable creation and comedy. Marnie French.

New in the LibraryThe new items list on our catalogue lists 587 items. You can see the list by clicking here . We will list only about 4 percent of these titles in this newsletter, just to whet your appetite, but rest assured that many others are waiting for you on the Library shelves – why, on the first page of the website new items list, you can find 51 things to make with egg boxes, Fifty princess stories and Abracadabra! Fun magic tricks for kids.

Claire-Louise Bennett’s first book, Pond, has been shortlisted for the 2016 International Dylan Thomas Prize and named one of The Millions' Most Anticipated Books of 2016. It consists of 20 stories told by an Irish semi-reclusive female narrator, re-enchanting the world and judged “a truly stunning debut” by the Guardian reviewer. Ruth Gilligan, also Irish, has moved from romance writing to a literary debut, Nine folds make a paper swan, about Jewish immigrants in Ireland. Michelle Cahill also writes of displacement and cosmopolitanism in her short story collection Letter to Pessoa. She is a Goan-Anglo-Indian poet who lives in Sydney, and the title of her first book of stories refers to the Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa, who created more than seventy versions of himself as author. His Book of disquiet is also on our shelves.

George Mann continues on his prolific way of combining fantasy and murder mystery, with Ghosts of Karnak, book three in the Ghost series. Martin Walker, too, reprises a good thing with book nine of the Bruno, Chief of Police, series Fatal pursuit. Massimo Carlotto, Italy’s “darkest crime writer bar none” (fantasticfiction.com), has a

new title (For all the gold in the world) to follow the five others on our shelves. China Mieville imagines an alternative history in The last days of new Paris, imagining the transformative power of Surrealism.

James King tells the real story of transformation in Roland Penrose: the life of a surrealist, exploring his Quaker upbringing and life as artist, biographer, pacifist, lover, impresario, collector and art historian. Possession: the curious history of private collectors from antiquity to the present, written by Erin Thompson, “America’s [and the world’s?] only professor of art crime”, covers everything from Tiberius to contemporary looting in Syria. Looting during wartime is well-documented: now Lukasz Kamienski reveals Shooting up: a short history of drugs and war, and demonstrates that a pharmacologically enhanced military has been around as long as war itself. Viet Thanh Nguyen, “born in Vietnam but made in America”, has recently won the Pulitzer Prize for his first novel, The sympathizer; and has now followed that up with Nothing ever dies: Vietnam and the memory of war, looking at all participants, civilians and combatants, and how recognition of shared humanity is necessary for reconciliation.

We also have works that visit the fields of religion (The apostates: when Muslims leave Islam by Simon Cottee), fairy tale (Grimm legacies: the magic spell of the Grimm’s folk and fairy tales by master folklorist Jack Zipes), translation (Anne Carson’s Nay rather) and philosophy (Gianni Vattimo wondering what Of reality: the purposes of philosophy).

There are examples from the classics (Love poems, letters and remedies of Ovid translated by David Slavitt), poetics (Ben Lerner examines the art he wants to defend, starting with “Plato's famous claim that an ideal city had no place for poets, who would only corrupt and mislead the young”, in The hatred of poetry), photography (Among unknown tribes: rediscovering the photographs of [Norwegian] explorer Carl Lumholtz in Mexico and Borneo) and fruit (Joan Morgan’s beautiful Book of pears: the definitive history and guide to over 500 varieties).

Finally, there are books of memoir (Eric Fair’s time as an interrogator with a private contractor in Iraq had the Consequence of nightmares, a crumbling marriage and a visit to the heart transplant ward) and music (The Boydell Press, sponsored by the admirable Aga Khan Trust for Culture, invited ethnomusicologists to contribute eye-opening chapters on Java, Japan, China, India, Turkey, Iran, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan - among others – to The other classical musics: fifteen great traditions.