International Book Club Meeting of January 18, 2012

          The International Fiction Book club met on January 18th to discuss The Quiet Girl by the Danish author, Peter Høeg.  There were a few puzzled yet curious faces, somewhat apprehensive but also engaged readers seeking answers to try and unravel the various levels of the interwoven plot structure to this unique book.

          The first line of this 408 page novel is narrated by the omniscient voice sounded through the senses of the main character.  “SheAlmighty had tuned each person in a musical key, and Kasper could hear it.”  Obviously omniscient, as it mentions his name, but as the work (for work is necessary) evolves, the narrator and main character, Kasper, overlap in both time and circumstance.  The novel concludes with:

                   What he could hear sounded lovely.  Certainly like a great

                   gala performance.  And certainly very, very difficult.

What comes between these bookend sensations can be a difficult read if one expects to find a “thriller” in the traditional sense of the genre.  In some instances it has been billed as such.  But The Quiet Girl is not a linear, traditional story but more of a postmodern pastiche of sound interpretations as seen and felt through the eyes and ears of a clown. The mood and feel of Copenhagen as seen through a fogged up mirror so that one must listen in order to see.  Oh, to be sure, there is a plot but it is scattered amidst the existential backdrop of Copenhagen and the joys and sorrows of a circus clown wrapped in the cloak of Kierkegaard’s ghost in search of a mysterious little girl and her aura of silence.

          Personally, I got the sense early on that I would have to let the sentences flow without worrying too much about how the plot was developing.  The book is well written from start to finish and we all agreed on that most important aspect.  So, as a reader, I became buoyant, partly submerged in a time-warp of a mysterious plot but supported by numerous allusions to philosophy, clown - foolery, humor (both slapstick and black) and clever use of multiple meanings.

          There are hints early on of double meanings.  The tinted glass of the long, black Volvo.  A man and woman register an acoustic essence of D-Minor and the girl they bring to see Kasper emanates a silence that obliterates reality.  Of course the silence he senses might be infused with a symptom from a momentary blackout he experiences due to his lack of sleep from having stayed up gambling away his fortune two nights in a row.  It is his ability to discern the acoustic essence of people, described in musical pitch, that enables him to help children overcome psychological trauma.  He has helped hundreds of children in this way.  Kasper gained this ability because of a circus accident as a child.  He comes from a circus family and his main profession is world class clown.

          At once we have the upheaval in Kasper’s life set amidst his search for the girl who may or may not have been kidnapped.  Along with another child who has exceptional abilities, this “quiet” girl becomes involved with a plot by land speculators who are attempting to either cause, predict or prevent an earthquake from occurring under Copenhagen.  Kasper teams up with several bizarre characters, including his ex-wife who works for city government and might be playing both sides of the fence.  In his quest to find the girl, Kasper is shot, has his skull fractured and he takes many taxi rides with a driver who has no legs.   One can see why some critics call this a thriller gone awry.  There are many thrilling scenes but the action only approaches gratuitousness once or twice and then things take on such an absurd bent as a spark of humor and character wit provides the basis to read on without expectation.

          I cannot stress enough the rich quality of the prose that overrides the complex nature of this story.  As he begins his search for the girl, Kasper discovers that she has connections to a monastery of the Russian Orthodox Church outside of Copenhagen.  Upon this discovery he adds caffeine to his mix of alcohol and sleeplessness.  After taking the caffeine wafers he places his cup upside down - a habit evidently formed after meeting the famous mime, Jacques Tati, whom he saw place his glass upside down after removing his makeup.  When asked why, Tati responds, “the dust”.  When Kasper says, “but we’ll be back tomorrow”, the mime smiles with mouth only, “we can only hope so but can we count on it?”  This meeting with Tati took place after his movie “Playtime” was panned by the critics and he lost his fortune which he had spent making the film.  I mention this anecdote because it is typical of the author’s use of reflection and how it sets the tone and pace for the prose.  We never get too removed from something we can hang our hat on.

          Our discussion was free-wheeling as was the book.  We took a brief excursion into attempting to define or clarify Existentialism as pertains to the “father” of this philosophy, Søren Kierkegaard.  This led to a discussion of how Kierkegaard’s own “earthquake” of self-realization that he wrote about at age 25 coincides with Sviatoslav Richter’s playing of Bach that Kasper uses for background music when attempting to decipher a child’s acoustic essence.  The “Richter scale” then comes into play again when the plot of the land speculators and talk their of an earthquake is monitored by the Richter Scale.  One can put the two or three levels together but the author allows the reader to do so.  He does not spell it out.

          There is drama to this book but the story within the story is, I believe, the earthquake under Copenhagen.  The real, main story is the earthquake of Kasper himself.  Late in the novel we find out that the “quiet girl” is really Kasper’s daughter and Stina, his ex-wife, knew all along as she was pregnant when they broke up.  Good reason after all for her to try and steer Kasper away from and then to the villains and the girl.  Overall, a fascinating read and good discussion.

          Next we tackle Anil’s Ghost by Michael Ondaatje.  It is set in late 20th century Sri Lanka.  We meet the evening of February 15th at 6:30 p.m. in the Blum House next door to the Collinsville Memorial Library.  Check out the book from the front desk and join the discussion.

Posted by Jim Krapf

Lookin' For Answers

The Collinsville Memorial Public Library and Fairmont City Library Center's Staff recently took a little time to compete against each other in a Scavenger Hunt that led them all over the Collinsville Library Center. Here are some of our favorite questions from the hunt. Give it a shot to see how many answers you can find around the library!

1.) Alphabetically, what's the first magazine in our collection?
2.) How many people are in the "Peddlers" photograph in the Collinsville Area Camera Club's Photography Display on the First Floor?
3.) Which of these characters is not featured in the Stairway leading up to the Children's Floor: the Gingerbread Man, Arthur, the Cheshire Cat, the Tin Man, or Jack & The Beanstalk?
4.) There are two Horseradish Festival Posters hanging in the Community Room. What years are they from?
5.) What is the library's fax number?
6.) What is inside of the barn that's painted on the wall of the Children's Library Toy Room?
7.) In the Non-Fiction 800-999.99 Wing of the Library, what is the sum of the 22 large blue numbers that border the room?
8.) True or False: A man smoking a pipe is depicted in the Stained Glass above the Main Desk.
9.) What's the title of the poem hanging on the wall in the Adult Reading Room?
10.) What number is on the hat of the Fireman in the "Read To Your Hero" poster on the Children's Floor?
11.) Whose name is on the door of the Adult Reading Room?
12.) Who is the Community Room named after?
13.) How many hours is the Fairmont City Library open in a regular week (with no holidays)?
14.) Which Children's Book won the Caldecott Medal in 1986?
15.) Alphabetically, what's the last magazine in our collection?

Happy Searching!
/jed

Friends of the Library Book Sale This Month!

Books, records, videos, and more all put out on tables and ready for you to take home. The Basement Sale will open at 9am and close at 8pm for one day only.

2011 September -- November 2012 January -- March -- May -- July

Last hour bring a bag and a dollar and take what you want! By the end of the day it will all be gone!


Posted by Jessica Lawrence

Winter Reading Program - "Warm Up with a Good Book"

The Winter Reading Program has begun! Earn chances to win prizes for reading anything you want from January 2 - March 5. Audiobooks and eBooks count. Start reading and filling out tickets today! Pick up a packet at the Main Desk. The more you read the more chances you have to win!

Posted by Jessica Lawrence.

New Year - New You!

According to the book:  52 small changes: one year to a happier, healthier you by Brett Blumenthal. 

When was the last time you vowed to overhaul your life - only to revert to your former ways a few days later?  Let's face it:  change is easier said than done, especially when it comes to managing your health amidst the chaos of everyday living.  Now wellness coach Brett Blumenthal has devised a way to inspire and motivate anyone to live healthier and make positive changes in their lives.  This is no quick fix, but it is a surprisingly simple one:  make one small change per week, for 52 weeks and at the end of a year, you'll be happier and healthier.

Week 1:  Drink up!  Although water isn't a major source of vitamins or minerals, it is an important part of your diet and overall health.  Roughly 60 to 70 percent of your body weight is water, and replenishing your body on a daily basis is vital to proper body function.

So check out this book today & get started!

Posted by Katie Heaton
Branch Manager, Fairmont City Library Center

Food For Fines for Christmas

Until December 16 you can pay your fines with non perishable food items. For every non perishable food item you bring in we will waive $1.00 in overdue fines and then donate that food item to the Collinsville Food Pantry. This only works for overdue fines not billing fees but it’s a win, win for all, your fines are paid for and you’re helping those in your community. For more information please call the Collinsville Library at 618-344-1112.

4th Annual Art & Author Holiday Market

Just in time for Holiday giving! Buy local, buy original. Meet local authors and artists. Books, art, unique finds and more! Join us at the Blum House for a festive and fun-filled day at the 4th Annual Art & Author Holiday Market on Saturday, December 3rd from 12-8pm. Hosted by the Collinsville Memorial Library Center in conjunction with Christmas in Collinsville.

-Posted by Jessica Lawrence

Local Author Publishes New Book

Local Collinsville author Rev. Dr. Lloyd E. Shaw has just published his seventh book entitled Memoirs of a Retired Pastor. In honor of this achievement Shaw's daughters hosted a party/book signing on Sunday, November 20th in the Community Room here at the Collinsville Memorial Library Center. The event was an enormous success with Dr. Shaw not only signing his newest book, but actually giving away free copies! Spirits were high among the large crowd that turned out, and there was a lot of joking between the author and attendees. However, if you missed this party and the chance to get your own free book don't worry. Lloyd E. Shaw will be a guest at the Art & Author Holiday Market at the Blum House on December 3rd from 12-4pm. As well, his book Memoirs of a Retired Pastor will be available for checkout from the library along with Lloyd E. Shaw's Dreams : Doorway to Emotional Health, God in the First Person : Moving Beyond Belief to Knowledge, and Reflections of a Twentieth-Century Tom Sawyer : Growing Up in the Depression.

-Posted by Grahm Underwood

Review of The International Fiction Book Club meeting of November 16th

The International Fiction Book Club meeting of November 16th, 2011 delved into the novel, Suite Française by Irène Némirovsky.  First published in France in 2004, sixty-two years after the author was put to death in the gas chamber at Auschwitz, this book proves to be the first document in novel form about the German invasion and occupation of France since it was written while the events described were happening.  According to an interview published in the book, Woman of Letters: Irène Némirovsky and Suite Française,  Némirovsky’s daughter, Denise Epstein, received a valise from her father, as he was being taken away by the Nazis, and was told it contained her “mama’s notebook”.  The dramatic tale of how the “notebook” survived is fascinating in itself as the author’s two daughters barely managed to avoid capture by French collaborationists and spent time in hiding and in an orphanage and then later in a boarding school.  While in hiding, Denise kept the valise by her side but when sent off to school it was kept by a notary until she came of legal age.  For many years she could not bear to open the notebook, thinking it was her mother’s personal diary and would be too painful to read.  When she finally transcribed the minute handwriting (so to save the scarce paper supply) she realized she was dealing with the first two parts of a planned five part novel concerning the exodus from Northern France (“Storm in June”) and the occupation of a small French town by German soldiers (“Dolce”).

             From her notes, we can better understand the grand plan that Némirovsky envisioned.  The first part “Storm in June” acts as a prelude while “Dolce”, in Italian, is a musical term that means sweet and slow.  Her intent was to show the “struggle between personal destiny and collective destiny”.  As one participant in the discussion said, “this book provides an intimate look at the occupation of France…very personal and immediate…the prose is lyrical [yet] restrained”.  By describing little vignettes of those fleeing the bombing, the author gives us a telescopic view of upper-class interiors instantly submerged through panic into the domain of the exterior populace that makes up the lower classes.

             From the wealthy Pericand family, with the grandfather’s threats to leave his fortune to a home for wayward youth, to the bourgeois writer Gabriel Corte, Némirovsky nimbly uses descriptive detail but never overdoes the scene.  She manages to parcel out satire with deft awareness as in her juxtaposition of the aristocratic art collector Charles Langelet stealing petrol in order to continue his escape with the Pericand’s cat sinking his teeth into a bleeding bird.  Némirovsky deals out the mad reactions to the panic as Monsieur Corbin, the banker, chooses his mistress and her dog while leaving his middle class clerk and his wife, the Michauds, with an ultimatum to catch the train for the branch bank on threat of dismissal.  Since the tracks were bombed the Michauds begin walking and as a result are both fired.

             Another participant in the discussion remarked he was “amazed that this woman, who in occupied France had to wear the yellow star and suffer great humiliation because of it, was able to prevent bringing in that personal experience into her characters”.  This led to a discussion of some Jewish criticism that refers to Némirovsky as an anti-Semite because she published some short stories in a journal that also published anti-Semetic propaganda.  True, there are no Jewish characters in the novel, but the art collector, Charles Langelet, at one point bemoans the current conditions while being thankful he is not Jewish.  He is by no means a sympathetic character and, upon his return to Paris, after the armistice is signed, he is run down by a car and killed in the darkened street just after the stingy hiring of a maid for his apartment.  After his death in the street we are propelled back to the apartment where the maid tips over an expensive vase.  The biographers of Irène Némirovsky revealed that the Langelet character was based on a well-known right-wing journalist of the time.

             The proposed third section of the novel was to be called “Captivity” and, as the events were unfolding, she writes in capitals in her notes, “FOR CAPTIVITY FOR THE CONCENTRATION CAMP THE BLASPHEMY OF THE BAPTISED JEWS… MAY GOD FORGIVE US OUR TRESSPASSES AS WE FORGIVE YOURS”.  Mainly, for her children sake it appears, Némirovsky converted to Catholicism in 1939.  She never practiced the Jewish faith and hated her mother but hated hypocrisy even more.  She reserved the cruelest fate of any character for Father Philippe, the oldest son of the Pericand family and a priest.  He was given the duty of evacuating the group of wayward boys from the home that received the grant from the elder Pericand.  Along the way through the countryside the priest stops at intervals to pray for the strength to manage this group of boys.  He dislikes the troubled youth and they in turn take advantage to steal from a farmer’s cottage.  When he tries to stop them, they stone him to death.  He ends up stuck in the mud of a stream trying to escape their throws.

             During the German occupation of a small town, similar to the one where Némirovsky lived at the time she was writing the novel, an uneasy romance of a sort is played out between a cultured German officer and one of the occupants of the house where he is billeted.  Lucille, whose husband is a prisoner of war and who she was never in love with, strikes up an uneasy friendship with the officer.  Her mother-in-law lives in the house and despises the German but has to put up with him.  Although Lucille is friendly with the officer, she dramatically resists him when he makes advances.  She also agrees to hide an escaped French soldier who killed another German officer who he suspected of making advances to his wife.

             It is clear that Némirovsky wanted to write a book about how the German invasion and occupation of France exposed the differences in classes which led to such hypocrisy and even collaboration.  Some of the cultured class in French society felt more of a bond with the German occupying force than with their own people who were beneath them on the class scale.  Rather than feeling empathetic with the masses leaving Paris, Charles Langelet says, “All the men looked like bandits, the women like con artists”.  Her plan for “Captivity” included the wealthy author Corte becoming a collaborator only to become disillusioned.  It was obvious that everyone in attendance at our meeting agreed that Némirovsky’s novel speaks for itself.  She only published in a right-wing journal when she, as a Jew, was turned down by her usual publishers.  After publishing a short story in such a manner, she made note that she feels, “like someone who makes fine lace in the midst of savages”.

             Though most of the plot focuses on small events, a panoramic view of the French capitulation, there are enough mentions of the conflict at large to put things in perspective.  Every so often, between sketches of major character development, the author uses minor characters or un-named French voices to draw back from the personal and note the horrors of large scale war.  One example we discussed was the fate of three sons of a local blacksmith.  One was a prisoner of war, the other killed in battle and the third missing at Mers-el-Kébir.  This was a reference to the Algerian port and the sinking of the French fleet by the British.  According to her idea of the novel found in Némirovsky’s notes:

                        The most important and most interesting thing here is

                        the following:  the historical, revolutionary facts etc.

                        must be only lightly touched upon, while the daily life,

                        the emotional life and especially the comedy it provides

                        must be described in detail.

This book relies on the intensive quality of each sentence as the author probes the soul of the French populace.  It is the youngest Pericand son, Hubert age 17, who remarks, …“everywhere you look, chaos, cowardice, vanity and ignorance!  What a wonderful race we are!”

            If there are heroes to find, they are Hubert, who joins the French army though he is underage, and Jean Marie who escapes from a POW camp and is set to fall in love with Lucille in “Captivity” but when he finds out that she still has feelings for the German officer sets off once again to fight the Germans.  Némirovsky had faith in the French youth and was looking forward to a fourth section entitled, “Battles” and alas, a fifth section, “Peace”.  She would not live to see peace again but the document she left behind is an incredible testament to the search for truth in a time of crisis.

            Our next selection for the International Fiction Book Club is The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery.  We will be meeting the evening of December 21^st at the historic Blum House next door to the Collinsville Memorial Public Library.  Copies of the book may be checked out at the front desk.

                                                                                                        Posted By: Jim Krapf