The Earth Hums in B Flat by Mari Strachan

“Bethan cried herself to sleep tonight. I leave her hiccupping and snoring as I rise up, up, up into the sky where the air is as soft to rest upon as Mrs. William Penrhiw’s powdery bosom. Up here, far away from everybody, the night is peaceful; there’s no sound except the hum of the Earth. At school, when I sang the note to Mr. Hughes Music he said it was B flat but he laughed when I said it was the note the Earth hummed.” (page284)
Mari Strachan’s astonishing debut novel brings us the voice of one of the most endearing adolescent narrators in recent memory. Gwennie Morgan is 12 years old, lives with her mother, father and sister Bethan in a Welsh village in the 1950’s, goes to school with her best friend Alwenna, is a budding detective and … oh yes, she flies-unaided by an airplane or any other contrivance. The story begins as she is flying at night through her village and fretting as to why she can’t seem to fly during the day. Immediatley I fell in love with her, mostly because I can remember myself dreaming of flying at her age too.
Gwennie is very much in tune with everything around her and her creative spirit kicks in when she attempts to solve the mystery surrounding the disappearance of her neighbor, Ifan Evans. Add to this, Gwennie’s growing pains that accompany her pubescent maturation, a mother suffering from mental illness who emotionally abuses her, growing alienation from her good friend Alwenna, a father that loves and understands her, a tender love for all things in nature and it is easy to see how Gwennie needs to fly to keep herself abreast of all that’s happening in her small town and to sort out her baffling feelings. When her detective work leads her to a resolution that strikes very close to home, Gwennie must decide how much information she will share and with whom, knowing that the knowledge will hurt those close to her. It’s the flying above this humming earth that soothes Gwennie’s spinning head: “But he doesn’t know how the Earth’s deep, never-ending note clothes me in rainbow colours, fills my head with all the books ever written, and feeds me with the smell of Mrs. Sergeant Jones’s famous vanilla biscuits and the strawberry taste of Instant Whip and the cool slipperiness of glowing red jelly. I could stay up here forever without the need for anything else in the whole world.” (page 284)
Strachan does a terrific job developing Gwennie’s character, as well as all the other characters in the story. I really felt I knew them and could easily empathize with them. I wanted to be in that close-knit little town in Wales and I was sorry to see the story end. I’m hoping this is just the beginning for an author who shows great promise. Highly recommended. ( )

Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov

When I first decided I wanted to read Lolita it was because I wanted to broaden my appreciation of the classics that I was sorely missing. I had a rough idea of what the story line was: I recognized that it concerned a pedophile and a young girl but beyond that I really didn’t know what to expect. I had always assumed that there was a lot of graphic sex in the story. Then again, the book received many good reviews and was generally a four or five star read for other readers. It sat on my nightstand for over a year and when I realized that last week was Banned Book Week, what better time to attempt this classic. I was very surprised by what unfolded as I read the book. Certainly it involves a pedophile and his experience with young Delores Haze, whom he tenderly calls, Lolita. Absent is the graphic sex I had expected and present is some of the most beautiful writing I have ever had the joy of reading. Nabokov had a gift for language that was stunning to behold. I had only read one other Nabokov novel, the very light-hearted Pnin, which actually was a good springboard for getting into this meatier read.
Of course, the idea of a story about a pedophile is gruesome, but somehow in Nabokov’s hands, the beauty of the language overcomes the disgust of the storyline. You certainly feel sorry for Delores and yearn for her to escape from Humbert Humbert, as they traverse the country in their one year journey (August 1947-August 1948). He was such a complicated character though, that I’m not sure I ever actually despised him, although I disagreed with him on many levels. But the pictures Nabokov drew as the story progressed were just so beautiful and memorable that it’s very difficult to think of not liking the book because of its lewd reputation. It’s so much more than that. Picture this:
“The new and beautiful post office I had just emerged from stood between a dormant movie house and a conspiracy of poplars. The time was 9:00 a.m. mountain time. The street was Main Street. I paced its blue side peering at the opposite one :charming it into beauty, was one of those fragile young summer mornings with flashes of glass here and there and a general air of faltering and almost fainting at the prospect of an intolerably torrid noon.” Page 224
Passages like this are evident throughout the book. Nabokov paints the picture for you to see and all you can say is, “Beautiful.” Highly recommended.

Pnin by Vladimir Nabokov

Pnin by Vladimir Nabokov tells the story of professor Timofey Pnin who teaches Russian at a small New England college in the early 1950's. It is the story also of the immigrant experience at that time.It is Nabokov's intense development of this one character that takes up the entire book. Other characters are present but they really don't matter. It's Pnin that this book is about. You get to know him intimately, but find that you really don't know him at all. There is no shortage of characters that take advantage of him and his many shortcomings help to spell out his predicament.As the story begins, he is on his way to give a speech to a ladies' group in a nearby town. So like the character we come to know, he gets on the wrong train and needs to constantly assure himself that he has his speech in his pocket, and his awkwardness among others becomes apparent.The love of his life has dumped him for another, more suitable husband, a "genius" but Pnin will take her back, no questions asked and under any circumstances. He is preparing to leave France and emigrate to the United States when Liza shows up again. "He was halfway through the dreary hell that had been devised by European bureaucrats for holders of that miserable thing, the Nansen passport, when one damp April day in 1940 there was a vigorous ring at his door and Liza tramped in, puffing and carrying before her like a chest of drawers a seven month pregnancy." He is totally oblivious of his strange characteristics and has no idea that his colleagues at the college ridicule him but all of this make him that much more sympathetic and you can't help but like him. Highly recommended. (4/5 )