Needle Lake: Who Are You?

 

 

Needle Lake  (2025)

By Justine Champine

Penguin Randow House, 256 pages.

★★★

 

I really liked Needle Lake, so why only three stars? Simply because I think a lot of readers will find it slow, despite its short length. You need to know that there is very little that happens in the novel and that the one tragic and terrible thing that does occur is revealed from the get-go. In my opinion, author Justine Champine would have gotten more bang for the proverbial buck had she cloaked that event in more ambiguity. It is the sort of thing that should come as a surprise, not something preordained.

 

If I might borrow from rocker Pete Townshend, Needle Lake is like the opening of one of Townshend’s songs: Who are you? Who? Who? Who? Who? Much of the novel is deeply interior. Mineral, Washington, is a West Coast logging town where there’s not much going on. Fourteen-year-old Ida was born with a heart defect that led her parents to (over) protect her. She is not allowed to run, exert herself, take gym classes, or fight back if bullied. As is often the case, this makes her a target, not a figure that evokes pity. It doesn’t help that Ida’s a map nerd who wins geography contests. Most kids her age don’t think about the bigger world, let alone treat maps as sacred documents or dream about dots on a map that Ida knows all about. As a result, Ida is a recluse who insulates herself from social isolation by leaning into the safety of her routines. She’d much rather study alone in the library than try to befriend her tormenters.

 

Ida’s routines are upended when her 16-year-old cousin Elna comes to stay for several weeks. All Ida is told is that Elna needs a short break from her mother in San Francisco. At first Ida is annoyed by her cousin’s constant chatter about how much better things are in San Francisco and how her mother lets her do as she wishes. Eventually, though, Ida comes to believe that Elna is everything Ida is not: brave, free, popular, glamourous… Of course, at 14, Ida doesn’t yet see that a lot of what she finds admirable can also manifest as recklessness, unrestrained, promiscuous, and faux painted dress-up. And that’s not to mention Elna’s thievery, selfishness, and lying.

 

When the horrible thing that happens finally takes place, Elna convinces Ida to run away with her. They are bound for Los Angeles, a place where Elna is convinced is her destiny. They are on the run for several days, though why police can’t trace a stolen vehicle is the novel’s McGuffin. Don’t despair, nothing awful happens to the girls. The true tragedy of Needle Lake is ineffectual parenting. Male role models are conspicuously absent for reasons that will be revealed, but neither mother/sister is adept at raising her daughter. To add a layer of poignancy, Ida admires Elna’s adaptability and poise, yet Elna is secretly envious of Ada’s protective bubble. Each will have to come to grips with the fact that wishes don’t help in the quest for self-identity.

 

Champine tells most of her tale through Ida’s eyes. She does such an excellent job of showing the world through 14-year-old eyes that it took me back to my own search for identity at the same age. More specifically, it reminded me of just how hard it was to answer the who-are-you question. But because Ida was used to being self-contained and imagined the world and her potential place in it, we get the sense that she will be all right. Elna? The best we can say is that it’s an open question. She certainly has more to reconcile than Ida. I don’t know if Champine meant for us to conclude that morality is the key to making dreams concrete, but it’s certainly a legitimate takeaway message. I wish Champine had developed intentionality more clearly. Alas, a weak ending leaves us wondering if the key to knowing who are you is linked to another question: What is the nature of your dreams?

 

Rob Weir

 

# Thanks to NetGalley and Random House for an advance copy of Needle Lake.

 

Les Eyzies-de-Tayac-Sireuil is a Lesson in Human Evolution

The fog was just lifting when we arrived

{See my Facebook page tomorrow for lots of pictures}
 

Les Eyzies-de-Tayac-Sireuil is often called the “Capital of Prehistory” and I wouldn’t question it. In and around the village are numerous caves with etchings and paintings from the so-called “Stone Age,” which is the longest period of human-like and early humans. It only stretches from circa (about) 3.4 million years ago to circa 4000 -2000 B.C.E. That’s a mere 99% of the time humans and their ilk have been on the planet. Most of what we think we know of the Stone Age (Paleolithic) era is inferred from visual evidence such as stone and bone tools, skeletal remains, rock carvings, examination of habitats, and painted cave walls. The Stone Age isn’t an entirely accurate term as some gold- and copper-working dates from the late Stone Age.

 

To try to get a grip on things, archaeologists subdivide the Stone Age. Insofar as we can tell at present, during the middle and later Paleolithic periods, homo sapiens evolved and became the dominant fully human inhabitants of the area, though that has been challenged. We continue to think the homo sapiens gave us the Bronze Age, the Iron Age, and the settled villages, domestication of animals, and farming of the Neolithic periods, but don’t be too sure. Among the many fascinating things on view at the National Museum of Prehistory in Les Eyzies is enough surviving bone to challenge the view that homo sapiens are unique. The area in and around Les Eyzies is pocked with so many once-inhabited caves that is was nicknamed “Troglodyte Village.”

 

There’s no such species as a troglodyte, but the story of humankind is often told as if there were. Ape-like australopithecines (and older) beings were assumed to inhabit the caves. They probably did, as did Neanderthals and homo sapiens. The part that stuns most folks today is the evidence that at least one line of Neanderthal needs to be reclassified as homo sapiens. (The jury is still out on the recently discovered hominids known as denisovans.) It’s pretty much a given that homo sapiens and Neanderthals interbred. Another mind-blowing discovery at the Prehistory Museum is that many Neanderthals differed from Cro-Magnons (long thought to be the first homo sapiens) only in that they were slightly smaller but more muscular. You can find modeled reconstructions of various humans and human ancestors in the museum, as well as now-extinct giant elk and wooly mammoths.

 

The museum alone makes Les Eyzies a busy place for a village of just 852 residents. It also makes one think, as it is housed in Château Tayac, a castle-like building that was constructed in the 12^th-16^th centuries in and around massive cliffs. Call it an advanced cave dwelling.

 

The village has a few shops but the word quaint comes to mind. It sits in a small valley near the junction of the Vézère and Beune Rivers. Local fully evolved French citizens farm and tend vines in Les Eyzies,  but tourism rules big time. Numerous archaeological sites important to human prehistory are on view and the famed Lascaux cave paintings are nearby. We visited a cave in Cougnac during the same visit.

 

By the way, troglodyte simply means cave dweller. If you visit Spain or Greece, you’ll learn that troglodytes are still among us. After all, why go to all the trouble of building a new structure if there’s a cave nearby that’s warm in the winter and cool in the hot summers. All you need to do is make sure it’s not currently occupied by bears! And, yes, there are bears in the Dordogne.

 

Rob Weir

 

 

The River is Rising: Tough Book but One of 2025's Best

 

 

 

 

The River is Waiting (2025)

By Wally Lamb

Simon and Schuster, 480 pages.

★★★★★

 

Some of the reviews I’ve read of The River is Waiting, the newest novel from Wally Lamb, raised my hackles. Lamb is a wonderful writer, but some readers trashed it for being too sad and using bad language. Sheesh! Just because a book covers a tough subject, doesn’t make it a lousy book. Like Lamb’s anti-hero, sometimes people make dumb choices, especially when under great stress. Horrible things can and do happen in life. Plus, it’s pretty hard to avoid unpleasantness and swears in a novel whose major setting is prison. So here’s some advice: If you are overly sensitive, something awful happens near the beginning of the book. If you can’t handle it, stop immediately and stay off the review forums! All you’ll miss is one of best books of 2025, even if it is one of saddest.

 

Corby Ledbetter seemingly had it all: a nice home, a good-paying job, a loving wife named Emily, and two-year-old twins Maisie and Niko. Then he lost his job, stood to lose his house, and was under so much stress that he began drinking and mixing drugs with booze. Under the influence of alcohol he had an accident in which a death occurred. In Connecticut law, a DUI resulting in a death is a second-degree murder charge. Although Corby got sober, went to AA, and underwent counseling with Dr. Patel, who documented his progress at sentencing, the usual verdict is six years in prison. A semi-sympathetic judge gave him three. In most states, anything over two years means incarceration in a state penitentiary, not a county lockup. Corby was cuffed and taken to the Yates Correctional Institution along the banks of the Wequonnoc River. (Both are fictional.)

 

This is a novel about what can be forgiven, what can’t be, guilt, reconciliation, survival, small kindnesses, violence, injustice, and tragedy. Lamb is known for his attention to detail, and interior character-centered books that probe thoughts and emotions. Corby is wrecked by grief, but wishes to be a better husband and father. In the beginning of the book he is an egoistic and unreliable narrator. It is to Lamb’s credit that he makes Corby into a believable reliable narrator, yet one who retains edges and anger. He’s a liberal who is forced to put his belief in racial equality into concrete action. He learns early on that no one in the prison is impressed by his intellect or his middle-class status; survival means floating above white and black gangs without dissing either of them. He also lucks out in that a gay cellmate named Manny shows him how things work on the inside, but respects Corby’s heterosexuality.

 

Lamb does another delicate balancing act by not sugarcoating prison violence, but allowing the possibility of being a decent person. Corby is deeply depressed. How not?  Negativity and acting out are as rife in prison as the food is disgusting. When Corby gets into trouble, it’s usually because he can’t shut off his injustice sensors, though it would be in his self-interest to do so. When an obviously psychologically damaged young man named Solomon is sent to Yates instead of a psychiatric unit, Corby tries to get sadistic guards Piccardy and Anselmo to lay off the “kid.” He even reports them. Bad move! Now they hate Corby even more than they enjoy picking on Solomon. Corby learns the hard way that prisoners have no rights and that he can’t trust the Yates psychologist.

 

The Wequonnoc River is a character in its own right. Inmates can hear it from their cells and, when on outside work detail, can catch glimpses of it. Corby even manages to walk down to it when the guards aren’t looking and secures a white “lucky stone” that he occasionally shares when another inmate needs comfort. The river represents the continuous flow of history, lives, and emotions. Corby adjusts to prison, but never allows himself to give up his yearning to be free or to repair his marriage. His best moments come when he gets to work in the library with Mrs. Millman, and when his art work attracts notice and he gets to paint a mural that wins accolades from both inmates and state officials.  But don’t wait for a happy ending. Lamb settles for a tragically ironic one that stings because it seems so utterly real.

 

 

Rob Weir

 

 

Sarlat-la-Canéda

Duck Dinner in Sarlat. Wine not pictured!

If you visit the southern section of the Dordogne–aka/ the Périgord or southern Aquitaine–chances are good you will end up staying at Sarlat-la-Canéda, not because it’s the most beautiful village–though it is very lovely–or the largest, but simply because it is an excellent base for exploring nearby sites of interest to tourists foreign and French. As such, it has more places to stay, numerous restaurants, and shops to cater to visitors. The town of Périgueux has nearly 30,000 residents but it takes 50 minutes to get to Lascaux from there, but less than a half hour from Sarlat. As realtors would put it, it's all about location, location, location.

 

A word on French jurisdictions. France is divided into regions, départments with an administrative prefecture, and communes (municipalities). The Dordogne is located in the Nouvelle Aquitaine region whose capitol is Bordeaux, is comparable to a U.S. state.  Périgueux départment prefecture (sort of like a county seat ) is one of five in the region, and greater Sarlat is the commune town for Périgord Nord (north). You’ll find Canéda on maps, but that small village has pretty much been absorbed by Sarlat.

 

Sarlat is relatively small–around 8,800 people–but its history dates back to at least the 9^th century when a Benedictine abbey was built there. Like many places in the area its golden stone construction has its roots in the Middle Ages. For such a small place it has 77 protected monuments, the latter term with a broader meaning than a single statue or memorial. Buildings, gardens, bridges, and entire sections of a town can be designated as a protected monument, as indeed can anything else deemed of historical value or important to French heritage and culture. Sarlat’s level of preservation has made it attractive to film directors such as Luc Besson, Peter Hyams, and Ridley Scott.

 

Sarlat is also visited because of its production of foie gras, pâté, duck confit, walnut concoctions, wine, cheese, and truffles. I’m not a fan of duck liver (or any other kind), but I can recommend all things walnut, the cheese, the wine, and the atmosphere. Market days are a big deal in Sarlat with its main square ( Place la Liberté) crowded with stalls, umbrellas, and people. Other protected monuments of note include the home of poet/humanist Étienne de La Boétie, Gisson mansion, the Place du Peyru, the cathedral, the bishop’s palace, and the Lantern of the Dead. Overall, Sarlat is a great place to hang out and soak up the atmosphere: cobblestone streets, unique facades, food, and great wine.

 

Note: My Facebook page will have more pictures of Sarlat tomorrow.

 

Rob Weir

 

 

 

 

Old and New Music for Fall 2025 Iona Fyfe; Carpenter, Fowlis & Polwart; Skye Consort; Debra Cowan; John Roberts; Windborne

 

The holiday season is just about upon us again, so why not give the gift of music? Some of these releases are a tad older, but they are new to me.

 

 

 

Iona Fyfe is a perfect name for a lass from Aberdeenshire. I  caught her show at Northampton’s Parlor Room in early October and enjoyed it immensely. Her newest release is titled Away From My Window (2018). It came home with me along with an EP East which she did with the Iona Fyfe Band. A “solo album seldom means a one-person recording project these days; the band’s fiddler, Charlie Grey, and piper/whistle player Ross Miller are on both recordings. Fyfe now lives in Glasgow, but she is the “Pride of Aberdeen,” which happens to be a track off her band album. For a lively treatment of a Child murder ballad listen to “Earl Richmond.” (That’s Child as in Francis James Child (1825-96), a ballad collector.) Fyfe’s solo record is also quite fine. “Guise of Tough” is a bothy ballad about a place with an unusual name in which her voice simulates a fiddle tune. (A bothy is a farm building and these songs were sung by laborers.) There’s a lovely version of “Glenlogie,” another Child ballad, which is sung akin to another old song, “Annachie Gordon.” It’s often the case that Aberdeenshire songs have slightly different tunes from other parts of Scotland, another reminder that “folk” songs were often regional in nature. Fyfe stays within tradition most of the time–like “Banks of Inverurie”–but she occasionally writes. The solo album has a stunner, “Banks of the Tigris,” which she wrote as a teen during the war in Syria. If some of her words sound unfamiliar, it’s not just her accent; Fyfe spearheaded an effort to have “Scots,” an English variant recognized as an official language. Yep–Scotland now has three “official” tongues: English, Scots, and Gaelic.

 

 

Let’s stay in Scotland (please!). There’s some moaning on Facebook. That’s not news, but this one is about an album titled Looking For the Thread, which is clearly marked as album by Mary Chapin Carpenter, Julie Fowlis, and Karine Polwart. Some people who apparently never learned that “and” is a conjunction have whined they didn’t know it wasn’t a Mary Chapin Carpenter album; a few have complained about the “Celtic crap” on the recording. News Flash, oh ye of such narrow taste and ethnocentric attitudes: That “Celtic crap” has long been an interest of MCC–she began as a folk singer–and she is friends with Fowlis and Polwart, the first one of the finest Gaelic singers on the planet and the latter a singer who is as famous in Scotland as MCC is in America. Note the title. The three join forces both to do their own thing and find commonality. The album opens with Fowlis taking to lead on “Gràdh Geal Mo Chridhe.” There’s no hope for anyone who can’t hear the stunning beauty of this song. Mary follows with the wonderful “A Heart That Never Closes.” Note that it too has a gentle feel. So too does Polwart’s “Rebecca,” a tribute to a tree with that name carved upon it. MCC wrote the title track and it says volumes about the spirit of this project. You pick up their synchronicity in the studio on “Hold Everything,” their first UK single. You can almost feel Carpenter breathing away from the limelight on this treasure house of gentle songs. Enjoy MCC but don’t overlook gems like Fowlis’ “Silver in the Blue.”  The ”thread?” Three friends making music, nature, and MCC’s closing track, “Send Love.” Added bonus: I’ve not heard harmonies this beautiful since Alison Krauss, Emmylou Harris, and Gillian Welch in Oh Brother, Where Art Thou.”

 

 

 

Skye Consort is a terrific quartet that I caught live in Holyoke. I was intrigued when I saw that Emma Björling was its lead vocalist. As her surname suggests, she’s Swedish and I knew of her from work with Scandinavian bands. The other three members of Skye Consort live in Montreal, though Alex Kehler was playing fiddle and nyckelharpa that night and he was actually born in the U.S. though he has been in Canada for quite some time now. In an unusual arrangement, Skye Consort also employs Simon Alexandre who takes Kehler’s place when Kehler is busy playing dances or when Alexandre isn’t gigging with La Traverse, the Ximenez String Quartet, or Ochestre Philharmonique de Québec. Skye Consort bill their style as “trans-Atlantic chamber folk.” I’m suspicious of such labels, but this one is apt. Cellist Amanda Keesmaat and bouzouki/banjo/singer artist Seán Dagher round out the quartet. Their latest album Ode & Ballade is a bit of everything. First a word on the nyckelharpa, which might be unfamiliar. It looks a bit like a hurdy gurdy without the crank, but is actually a keyed violin with a unique sound. You’ll hear traditional music from Sweden, the Shetlands, England, Denmark, France, Québec, and Scotland–sometimes several of them in the same set. You can be excused for thinking “She’s the Swedish” is from Björling’s home country; it’s actually Scottish, melded with a Québecois tune. Just to confuse you more, “En annan polska” should not be confused with a Polish polka, though both are dance tunes. A polka (which is actually Czech originally) is in 2/4 time but a polska is associated with Scandinavia and is in ¾ time and tends to be slower than a waltz. I loved Keesmaat’s switches between percussive and straight cello.  Got all that? The best way to figure it out is to listen. Note how “Jungfrun” is like a pastiche of pastoral and classical compositions. Check out this live clip of the Quebec/Irish “Foxhunter’s Jig” set to get a sense of how voices and instruments blend. For a French flavor there is “Les Triste Noces,” complete with a bit of foot percussion. Highly recommended.

 

 

 

 

When I was a young whelp deep in my rock n’ roll phase of life, I saw a concert at Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, that changed my life. On the bill were two musical partners from England, Tony Barrand and John Roberts. It was a holiday concert with Christmas carols as I never heard them before. Call it the beginning of a love affair with folk music that is now more than 50 years old. I got to know both Tony and John, with John the funnier and most approachable of the two. The duo was perhaps best known for their holiday mummers show Nowell Sing We Clear, but John also loved sea songs, recitations, and music hall material, the more offbeat the better. Tony passed away in 2022 and John in February of this year at age 80. One of his final recordings was A Shellback Songster (2024), so named because of a song by Ewan MacColl for a BBC film about sailing. John composed songs and tunes but he was most comfortable with traditional material and songs that sounded as if they were sprung from the mists of time. Shellback Songster is a baker’s dozen of trads and songs from people such as MacColl, Gordon Bok, Cyril Tawney, and Rudyard Kipling. This is sea music stripped to its basics, John’s distinct voice backed by concertina, banjo, or button accordion. It's hard to find John singing most of them, so forgive me if I offer a few with Tony and John that are solo of the record. One is “The Flying Dutchman,” the famed ghost ship. (John’s is the low voice.) He sand many Kipling songs. Here’s “Oak and Ash and Thorn.” (The record has Kipling’s poem “The Last Chantey.”) You can hear how John involved an audience. There’s also one called “Derelict” that you might know better as “Yo, Ho, Ho (And a Bottle of Rum).” Sorry I don’t have more to post, but if you’ve ever been to a sea songs festival, you’ve probably seen John and heard most of them.

 

 

 

 

You can purchase some of John Roberts’ material from his friend Debra Cowan, who is a mainstay on the folk circuit. Women and the Sea is her look at the seafaring life from the distaff side of things. Her website https://debracowan.com/category/product/ has two of John’s solo records and one that he and Debra did together. It also contains Cowan’s most recent EP, Greening the Dark. Cowan has a strong voice and sings what she likes. In that regard, Greening the Dark is a single traditional and five covers. The trad selection is “Hills of Greenmore,” which she plucked from a Steeleye Span album for a treatment that sounds Irish with a semi-nautical flair. My favorite covers are of Richard Thompson’s “The Old Changing Way” and Lester Simpson’s “Polly on the Shore.” The latter is a tough song, but has a sort of comeuppance ending. The EP is produced by Dave Mattacks, a legend in the music community since his early days with Fairport Convention.

 

 

 

Another musical highlight of 2025 was seeing the quartet Windborne at the Iron Horse. I mentioned Nowell Sing We Clear (NSWC) in the previous review; Windborne is heir to their throne, right down to the fact that one of the members is Lauren Breuning, the daughter of NSWC’s Fred Beuning. Brattleboro, Vermont, has been a folk music breeding ground ever since Margaret MacArthur (1935-2006) located to nearby Marlboro in 1951. Tony Barrand and John Roberts moved there in the early 1970s to teach at Marlboro College. Windborne’s Will and Lynn Rowan graduated from Marlboro and later taught there in a music program they started. The fourth member, Jeremy Carter-Gordon, also cut his musical teeth in southern Vermont. Windborne sing quite a few songs from NSWC’s Christmas mummer’s material. You can hear NSWC holiday standbys such as “The Boar’s Head Carol,” “The Cherry Tree Carol,” “The Darby Ram” and others on their To Warm the Winter Hearth album (2024). As for the rest of the year, they borrow from John and Tony’s old repertoire, but overall they are much more political and diverse. For example, Windborne’s Midwinter Meeting contains offerings from Basque country, Bulgaria, Corsica, the nation of Georgia, Québec, and the U.S. Appalachians. They are big supporters of unions and also include labor songs in their shows. As music scholars you learn a lot from their stage chat and Winter Hearth CDs come with a 44-page perfect-bound booklet. Windborne voices and harmonies are powerful instruments in their own right hence they usually sing a capella unless it’s some sort of special show. The two recordings have a total of 32 songs, so here are just a few to tantalize you.

 

Check their Website to see when they are playing somewhere near you. https://www.windbornesingers.com/concerts/

 

Sabodisho (Georgian)

Bentatik Nattor (Basque)

Boar’s Head Carol (England)

Come and I Will Sing You (English variant of 12 Days of Christmas; Lynn clogging):

Song of Hard Times (USA, from a forthcoming album):

 

Rob Weir

 

Saint-Émilion: A Place to Imagine the Middle Ages

Saint-Émilion

Go to my Facebook feed to see more photos

 

 

 

If you know red wines, you know Saint-Émilion. It is among the top-rated wines in the Bordeaux appellation (region), which has over 9,000 châteaux. There are 84 vineyards and producers in the village of Saint-Émilion. Given that the entire village has fewer than 1,700 residents, it’s easy to imagine that, aside from some shopkeepers and the ordained, everyone else must be a vintner.

 

I used to think that there is no such thing as a bad Saint-Émilion wine. That’s still a near 100% case, but we visited an organic vineyard whose wine we disliked. The workers were enthusiastic and idealistic, but the three wines of ascending price we tasted were so uninspiring that I’ve seldom seen so many trips to the dump bucket. Organic wines seldom use sulfur dioxide (SO2), which kills foul-smelling microbes, so many people (me included) think organic wine tastes sour. It’s also often cloudy and unless decanted and swirled can be like drinking unpasteurized milk. Organic foods are often preferrable and safer, but that’s not always the case. We smiled politely to our hosts, set out to explore the village, and felt envious of all the non-organic vineyards we walked by. (Organic wine also tastes sour because grapes are usually harvested earlier and their sugar content is lower.)

 

Our imbibing disappointment was more than compensated by the fascinating village. Like so many small towns in France its very name of Saint-Émilion indicates it was once a pilgrimage site on the Compostela Trail. It is a medieval village if you overlook modern touches like electricity. (It is more authentically so by observing parts of the original walls and buildings that have crumbled.) Émilion fled his hometown of Vannes because some of his views were tinged with beliefs from one of the many 8th century heresies. Bad on the church! He hid out in one of the many underground caves–we toured one–and miracles were attributed to the refugee monk. One occurred when Émilion was stopped by officials who accused him of feeding heretics and rebels. He was and had loaves of bread hiding under his robe. When asked what was under his robe, our good saint fibbed and said it was wood to heat the homes of poor villagers. When officials opened his robe, piles of wood fell out. Got it? Jesus turned water to wine and Saint-Émilion turned bread into wood!

 

We wish he had turned the weather to sunshine, as Saint-Émilion was the only place it rained during our entire trip, though it’s a charming place in any weather. Émilion was originally a baker and the village is known for its macaroons, which are more cakey than macarons. There are a good number of shops, cafes, and (of course) wine sellers. Most of the ambiance, though, comes from the sheer age of Saint-Émilion. You can squint and imagine it as it might have been in the 12^th century when its church was (probably) built. The village is relatively flat, but the church sits on higher ground and is nearly dead center of the village. It has undergone renovations, but you can see remnants of its original paint, frescos, and stonework. As is the case of many medieval churches, the one in Saint-Émilion contains relics of its patron saint.

 

Relics were a big deal in the Middle Ages. Believers thought that being prayerful in the presence of them could lead the saint to be an intercessor with God and grant their wishes. The problem–one Martin Luther sized upon during the Protestant Reformation–was that many of the relics were fakes and few can be authenticated. It was said there were enough pieces of the “True Cross” of Jesus to build a fleet of ships and a bridge as well. One church claimed to have some of Jesus’ teeth, which contradicted the belief in his bodily resurrection and ascension into Heaven. When that point was argued with the bishop, he quickly asserted they were Christ’s baby teeth! The relics mess was “rectified” during the Catholic Counter Reformation by saying that even if a relic was fradulent, grace came from the fervency with which the petitioner believed them to be true!

 

Excuse my discursion, but places like Saint-Émilion give us insight into earlier times and beliefs. I later communed with a glass of decent Saint-Émilion, organics be damned!

 

Rob Weir

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Clean: Slow for a Reason

 

 

 

Clean (2024)

By Alia Trabucco Zerán

Riverhead Books, 264 pages, Translated by Sophie Hughes.

★★★

 

Reading books from other cultures often requires patience. We cannot assume that North American values, ways of life, modes of expression, and storytelling mirror those of other lands.

 

Clean, a novel from Alia Trabucco Zerán delves into class construction and conflict within Chile. It is told from the perspective of Estela, a maid inside the home of Don Juan Cristóbal Jensen and Doña Mara López, both of whom work in the medical profession. Eventually a daughter named Julia comes into the home. Pay attention to their names because for most the novel the family is referenced as “the señor,” “the señora,” and “the girl,” or “the child.” It is Estela’s way of socially distancing herself from the family for whom she toils everyday in Santiago, Chile’s capitol. Estella is from poor peasant stock in the south of Chile, presumably of an indigenous background. She is nearly 40 when she becomes a maid, a status that highlights the enormous economic and social gaps between employer and employee.

 

On the surface, things don’t look so bad for Estela. She has her own room–off the kitchen of course–with a small TV and a radio. She is paid regularly and no one yells at her. Dr. Jensen pretty much ignores what happens in the household and the señora isn’t openly a tyrant. But, if you ever wondered what a microaggression is, note the myriad ways the señora never lets Estela forget that she is a servant and socially inferior. She corrects Estela’s grammar: “We don’t say armpit…. We say underarm.” You can imagine the señora’s swallowed disgust when Estela said, “they was” rather than they were. Once, the señora showed Estela a beautiful new dress and hung it in her closet. Estela surrendered to temptation and tried it on when she thought the señora was gone. When discovered, the señora responded with the ultimate microaggression: “You’d better wash it.” Estela did, as well as iron away ever wrinkle. It was again hung in the closet, but the señora never wore it. Perhaps the biggest microaggression was that Estela told the couple at her interview that she knew nothing of childrearing and did not wish to take care of an infant. They, of course, promptly had Julia and guess who changed the diapers, heated the bottles, played with the child, and took over every time the infant cried. Julia’s first word was “mama,” by which she meant Estela not Mara, but Estela could tell that the señora was miffed.

 

Estela came to resent the way the couple tried to imprint their values onto their daughter. They put Julia on a diet before she was three, made her take piano lessons, and tried to map out the toddler’s future road to success. When Julia resisted, they resorted to bribery, a pathway that made her into a spoiled brat. Julia also acts as the catalyst for Estela to recall her own childhood and become homesick for her mother. Estela can’t away for a long visit, but that doesn’t prevent relatives from hitting her up for money.

 

 The biggest problem is reflected in the novel’s slow pacing. Several terrible things will happen, but the very tedium and repetition of her life begins to sour Estela to the point where she becomes angry and perhaps is going slowly crazy. Most of her days are exactly alike;  prepare breakfast, clean, watch Julia, clean some more, make the beds, iron, make sure there is no dirt of mold anywhere, cook dinner, wash the dishes, shower, and perhaps watch some TV. Rinse and repeat. Not surprisingly, Estela’s optimism and spirit slowly come undone.

 

Aside from several deaths–one of which is non-human–very little actually “happens” in Clean. That too is by design, as is Zerán’s tactic of breaking the barrier between the narrator and the reader by having Estela speak to us as if we are in her room or thoughts. The novel ends with the words, “Hello? Can you hear me? Is anybody there?”  It’s uncertain where Estela is when she utters those words or why, but it’s not hard for us to imagine ourselves tongueless in the same mental cell as Estela.

 

Rob Weir