Iraq? No, Georgia! Mary Helen Stefaniak Appears for The Cailiffs of Baghdad, Georgia on Friday, October 22nd

If you read Mary Helen Stefaniak’s first published novel, The Turk and my Mother, you know it’s 1) set in the Bay View neighborhood of Milwaukee and 2) it’s a novel not “in” stories but “about” stories. It’s a great immigrant saga that I particularly enjoyed selling at the Schwartz Bookshop in Bay View (2005-2008). Stefaniak’s novel has stories wrapped in stories, each revealing more about one immigrant family.

So it was a bit of a surprise to start reading Stefaniak’s new novel, The Cailiffs of Baghdad, Georgia. Set in 1938 and told through the perspective of 11-year-old Gladys Cailiff, it’s about what happens when Threestep, Georgia gets in a new teacher in the form of one Grace Spivey, a Nashville girl who has traveled the world.

Grace brings her exotic interests into the classroom, particularly her fascination with 1001 Arabian Nights. Soon she’s organizing the Baghdad Bazaar, enchanting half the town, and perhaps enraging the other half, certainly her proper-yet-shrill student Mavis Davis, and Mr. Gordon, the town lawyer and Klu Klux Klan leader.

For Miss Spivey has no tolerance for the town’s antiquated notions of race. The Cailiff neighbor boy, Theo Boykins, is clearly the smartest in town, but as an African American, is consigned to a second rate high school far away. And the idea of using his brother Eugene in the Baghdad Bazaar play? Why, the only way to do that would be to convince everyone that a genie is a kind of slave.

So the narrative continues, surprisingly straightforward, a To Kill a Mockingbird kind of thing, or to use a more contemporary comparison, Mudbound. (I’ve got one more but I’ll save it for the big finish). And then the stories start—how the camels got to Georgia, the source of the ancient copy of the 1001 Arabian Nights book, how Spivey got to Baghdad in the first place to develop her fascination with all things Arabian.

I love the way that the racial divide in the small Georgia town mirrors many Americans current relations with Muslims, only in the 1930’s, the Muslims culture is so unknown that the folks of Threestep see the Baghdad culture as more exotic than other. In a sense, this story is about bridging the divide between Muslim and non-Muslim (the town is pretty much all Christian) as well as white and black.

I won’t give you the context of the stories, as that would give too much away, but it so reminded me of Rabih Alameddine’s last novel, where the characters would tell each other stories (some contemporary, some historical, some legendary) as they sat watch over the dying patriarch in a place (Beirut) where folks of different colors and religions coexisted peacefully. Storytelling is such an intrinsic part of Muslim culture that these stories within a story in The Cailiffs of Baghdad, Georgia make perfect sense when viewed in this context. Muslim culture finds itself seeping into the town of Threestep, which yes, does get renamed Baghdad.

So yes (wait for it), this novel is The Help meets The Hakawati. Please feel free to use this hook when you talk this novel up to others.

Stefaniak will be at Boswell on Friday, October 22nd. Welcome her back to Milwaukee (she grew up here, her mom’s from Georgia, hence the locale of the new book (and the last one). Want more? Here's Stefaniak talking about her inspiration.

How did Things Go with Our Book Club Discussion of The Hakawati?

What a big sprawling monster The Hakawati is! Rabih Alameddine's third novel is framed by Osama, a Lebanese man in the U.S. who returns to Beirut to watch over his dying father with the rest of his remaining family.

This is a book about storytelling, so all there are a lot of plot strands to follow. There's the stories about his extended family, like Uncle Jihad, his sister Lina, the rise of the family's car dealerships, life in Beirut under the Civil War, and so forth. There's the fanciful tale of Fatima, a servant who becomes lover of a demon and partners with 8 mischievous imps (Adam, Noah, Ishmael...you get the idea) to do battle with King Kade, the white goddess-like figure). There's the retelling of the legent of Baybars, the 13th century fellow who rose from slave to warrior and battled...well, I honestly got a little mixed up with this story, as it's the one that started last.

Our opinions ranged from "This is why I read fiction" to "Boy, this guy bit off a lot. I'm not sure he was able to chew it all." Reviews similarly ranged from incredible to problematic, but of course tended more to the former. After reading The Hakawati, I tried to get as many insights as I could about the book. My one contribution that I hadn't read elsewhere, was noting that cheering for Fatima, aligned with the demon, throwing conventional good and evil on its head, played off the recent historical fragments where folks of different religions (and there are a lot of different religious peoples in the book) demonize everyone else, but to the others, they are the demons. Similarly, that is probably why the most likable folks in the book are named Osama and Jihad--this actually came from one of club members, not me. But I agree.

I think Alameddine adopts a style that rejects certain traditional forms for novels. In a sense, his first two novels (Koolaids, and I The Divine) are both composed of fragments, the second actually being all composed of first chapters. In the case of The Hakawati, Alameddine offered the least storytime to the most traditional novel narrative, that of the framing story of modern-day Osama. This is totally stolen from two other critics, but it may be why I dipped into Koolaids, but never read it.

We all felt we would have appreciated the novel even more if we were more familiar with the source material. I was fascinated by how he told stories from so many different sources and made them his own. As usual, the results were an embarrassing blot on my reading history--how could I not have read Ovid's Metamorphoses? And am I reading it next? No. I have event books to conquer.

The book club was successful for me, as I really wanted to read Alameddine, and this was what forced me to do so. And I liked it, though I'm not sure if I did as much as my fellow bookseller Elizabeth Jordan at Bookpeople. I couldn't find a post in their blog where she talked about it, but here's where she calls it her favorite book of 2008. And then you should jump over and read their blog.

We are probably doing too many long books in a row for our in-store lit group book club. I also realize that I have to do some crowd pleasers. And at least one of the members is chomping at the bit to pick the books. I am leaning towards a Herte Muller for March. They are short.

That said, here are our next two selections:

Monday, January 4th, 7 PM

The Post Birthday World, by Lionel Shriver

My sister Merrill has wanted me to read this book forever. Before you get all fluffy on me, it was long-listed for the Man Booker. So there.

Monday, February 1st, 7 PM.

Elmer Gantry, by Sinclair Lewis

The Florentine Opera is offering discount passes to book club attendees. We may do a second day-time discussion.

On Reading "Driftless", which Nobody Guessed How Much I'd Like

In my experience, book clubs can choose their books in one of three ways:

a. The group votes on each selection

b. The group let's each member choose a title in some sort of order

c. The moderator chooses the book.

We have three in-store book clubs. Two groups choose using option a. When I tell folks that the group I run (first Monday of the month) chooses option c, I sometimes need to explain myself, even though there are certainly other clubs that use this method (like Oprah's!)

My explanation has two parts. One has to do with me whining and talking about how busy I am and how much I need to read, and how the only way I'm going to moderate this group is if I can choose the books.

And when I was at Schwartz, I occasionally tried to direct our in-store groups into coordinating selections with events, and I was almost always rebuffed. I want to sometimes coordinate our book club selection with an event (like this month's Driftless, or Elmer Gantry, which we're reading in February).

But there's another thing. It's my contention that I want my group to sometimes read outside our comfort zone. If books are chosen by groups, they sometimes fall into the trap of making things too comfortable. I'm not going to give examples, for fear of insulting someone. Heck, I do that enough elsewhere.

So I was pleasantly surprised to find that David Rhodes' Driftless was an almost classic Daniel book, filled with quirky characters, multiple intersecting plotlines, a straightforward but not drab storytelling style, and themes that touched to my core--place, identity, community, and the grayness of absolute judgment. I don't know what I was thinking. Perhaps there was too much focus on the rural setting, the militia, country music, making pies, Rhodes' backstory. When you take away the window dressing, Rhodes writes not too far from the territory of Michelle Huneven, that Blame and Jamesland author I have gone on about.

The structure of the story was clearly laid out somewhat in advance, and it's a concept that I didn't actually catch until towards the end. Some folks knew it going in and I'm sure that still made it a good read, but explaining the structure gives away what might be a twist to some readers, so at least here, I'm going to say little more. (I'm sure any number of traditional reviews gave it away in the first sentence). Let's just say it follows the life of July Montgomery, first written about in The Rock Island Line, many years later, as he's made peace with his life and settled down in the very small Words, Wisconsin. As it jumps between the dozen or so characters whose lives are profiled, you notice there is a bit of a continuing theme--there's a domino effect of grace, and how your good behavior really can affect someone else's life. There's also the continuing strand of how to make the best of a crappy childhood.

Sharon (who also liked Driftless) and I agreed that it usually took one of the plotlines to really pull you into the book. For Sharon, it was the sisters Violet (the older caretaker) and Olivia (younger and wheelchair bound), particularly when Olivia started rebelling. For me, it was the subplot about the farmers Graham and Cora, who discover that the farmer's coop (one of the folks involved is named Forehouse, hint) is not only abusing the farmers, but also stealing from the government. Really? A coop can sometimes be bad? I thought all coops were intrinsically better than other businesses. It was quite an education.

Kurt, who had also read the book for another book group, told us that we should all read Rock Island Line, Rhodes' earlier novel about July Montgomery. It really adds to the Driftless experience. Fortunately Milkweed has reissued this book, as well as The Easter House.

Not everyone in the group liked the book. Some members got bogged down in the story, and weren't thrilled with the writing style. Sadly, however, the folks who told me they didn't like the book also didn't show up for the meeting. It's fun to argue it out--as long as folks don't get too personal.

Three related items:

1. David Rhodes is appearing at Boswell Book Company on Friday, October 9th, at 7 PM. This is the first event of the Milwaukee Book Festival. Here's more info on the festival.

2. Our next meeting of the In-Store Lit group at Boswell is Monday, November 2nd, at 7 PM. We're reading Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Half of a Yellow Sun, a novel about Biafra's attempt to form an independent republic in Nigeria.

3. Just announced! Our December meeting on Monday, December 7th selection is The Hakawati, by Rabih Alameddine, a Lebanese novelist whose book has won amazing raves from both critics and booksellers. We should be selling this better, and I need an excuse to read it. What better reason can one have to pick a book?

**

Wolf Hall, by Hilary Mantel was awarded the Man Booker. We had one enthusiastic hold on the book before it released next week. Won't that customer be excited, getting a first printing?

Herta Mueller wins the Nobel Prize for Literature. Our I-Page database lists no books distributed in the United States. I'm glad they addressed that Eurocentricity problem this year.