Two at a Time

During a long drive to Washington DC and back, I listened to A Golden Age by Tahmina Anam, which was read by the actress, chef, and cookbook author Madhur Jaffrey. The story takes place in Bangladesh as the country struggles for independence from Pakistan in 1971. As the book begins, Rehana has lost her husband to a sudden heart attack. In a culture where a widow is powerless and seemingly helpless, she is also about to lose her two young children, who are being “adopted” by her husband’s brother and his wife. Yet she refuses to accept this cruel fate and somehow, through a series of events that become clear only much later, manages to get her children back. Her much loved son, Soheil, and her diffident daughter, Maya, grow up to become embroiled in the fight for independence, and they eventually drag Rehana into it as well. Through her tremendous love for her children, this “weak” little woman develops great strength and becomes a hero not only to her country but to her children. Against a backdrop of war and tragedy, this is really a hopeful book about love and persistence

When I wasn’t in my car listening to A Golden Age, I was reading Brazzaville Beach by William Boyd. I had picked up this book when I read a review of another newer book by Boyd, a British author whom I had never heard of but who has written a number of highly praised books. What a fortunate discovery! Brazzaville Beach has so much to recommend it: two interesting intertwining stories, a bunch of good characters (many of them chimpanzees), exotic settings (one at least), romance, and danger. Hope is an ethologist who has gone to Africa to observe chimpanzee behavior, working with the person who basically wrote the book on the subject. She is also in search of herself and trying to escape a tragedy in her native England where her anthropological endeavors were decidedly more sedate. In Africa, she observes chimpanzee behaviors that call into question the life’s work of her mentor, and her reports about these behaviors put her life in danger. I found the science in this novel to be fascinating and as compelling as the intrigue and romance.