A Constellation and Last September

First of all congrats to Andre Alexis who won the Giller Prize, Canada’s top literary award, this week for his novel “Fifteen Dogs,” which is a philosophical story about a group of dogs overnighting at a Toronto vet clinic that are suddenly capable of human intelligence. I heard the author read from his novel at our city’s book festival last month, but I haven’t gotten my hands on a copy of “Fifteen Dogs” just yet. It slightly reminds me of George Orwell’s “Animal Farm” because of the talking animals and the points being made about the human condition, but we will see. Have you read it yet?

Meanwhile, I finished one meaty literary read this week, as well as one light murder-mystery book. So between these two opposites my mind is a bit mush, though they did even each other out pretty well. The heavier read, Anthony Marra’s 2013 novel “A Constellation of Vital Phenomena,” is a book I picked for my book club to discuss in December since it received so many high accolades when it first came out and I’d been meaning to read it for a long time.

Set in Chechnya during its second war with Russia, the novel is about a small group of people struggling to survive in the bleakest of circumstances. One of them is an 8-year-old girl, Havaa, who hides when her father is abducted by Russian soldiers in the middle of the night. Her neighbor, Akhmed, is an incompetent doctor, who takes her to a crumbling, nearly deserted hospital to seek refuge for her. But Sonja, the doctor in charge there, is hesitant to risk harboring the child, even though she knows without it, the child will likely disappear as Sonja’s sister did. Akhmed’s “uncle” is another main character, who writes long histories of the Chechen land, and is conflicted by his once-tortured son, who’s a government informant that rats on people in their village. All of the characters become connected in intense ways as they navigate five days amid the brutal war.

“A Constellation of Vital Phenomena” involves tough material and isn’t an easy read, but for those who stick with it, its rewards are considerable. A few challenging things about the book perhaps are how it alternates chapters in different times and points-of-view, and throws in quite a bit of context and details about Chechnya and the war that one might not otherwise know. A lot of the pages also don’t have any paragraph breaks so the text seems to rattle on at length, adding to its density at times.

And yet, I became very intertwined with the characters and felt the suspense of whether or not they would survive or see their families again. They seemed so real and vivid. Sonja, the top-notch doctor, who returns from abroad to her homeland to try and find her sister, is my favorite of the bunch. She is gritty, brilliant, and sacrifices so much to help others, which is ultimately what I took away from the novel — the main characters’ humanity despite all the hell they go through. As author Anthony Marra told NPR: “It’s a novel about people who are trying to transcend the hardships of their circumstances by saving others.”

“A Constellation of Vital Phenomena” should stimulate a good discussion with my book club as there are quite a few characters in it and it involves such themes as sacrifice, betrayal, and forgiveness. In terms of the war in Chechnya, the book doesn’t seem to be on one side or the other, but is more about the ordinary people who get caught up in the war’s crosshairs. I found the novel to be pretty eye-opening about the Chechen country and war, which I only vaguely remember from news stories back then. The author obviously did a lot of research and visited the area, which shows. The novel is definitely a moving tribute to the people there who went through such things.

Meanwhile, the lighter book I finished this week was an audiobook called “The Last September” by Nina de Gramont. It’s a love story, murder-mystery type book that is set mainly in Cape Cod, Mass. At the book’s beginning, the narrator, a girl named Brett, whose marriage is on the rocks, finds her husband, Charlie, murdered. The story then goes back in time to how Brett met Charlie through his younger brother Eli, who Brett was good friends with, and tells of Brett’s long relations with the brothers — Charlie, a popular ladies man, and Eli, who becomes mentally unstable. Brett eventually snags Charlie to be her husband but first breaks off an engagement to Ladd, a well-off guy who grew up in the same cove as the brothers.

“The Last September” takes quite a circuitous route to find out who killed Charlie, and I was reminded in its suspenseful parts of Gillian Flynn’s novel “Gone Girl.” It kept my attention for the most part, but overall “The Last September” seemed too much like chick-lit to me, and it’s not a genre I typically read. I would recommend it for chick-lit murder-mystery readers. I thought it was well done for that genre — maybe a bit unrealistic in places — but just not a book in my favorite wheelhouse. Do I need to explain myself further, or have I opened a can of worms with my assessment?

What about you — have you read “A Constellation of Vital Phenomenon” or “The Last September” and if so, what did you think?