Pain

While treating patient complaints about pain, doctors typically inquire about the type, sharp or dull, and the intensity on a scale from one to ten. Most pain addressed by doctors is imposed from external sources such as an illness, an accident or an attack by another creature. Such pain can be temporary, sporadic or permanent, but is often regarded as separate from the sufferer, suggests Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Another source of pain is internal, the agony associated with deep shame, guilt and other emotions linked with regret linked to situations over which an individual had some measure of control. The encyclopedia touches on this category only briefly: “Like other experiences as conscious episodes, pains are thought to be private, subjective, self-intimating, and the source of incorrigible knowledge."  The internal pain is based on individuals' experiences, memories and agency and can be soul-crushing.  

The Rest Is Memory by Lily Tuck eloquently captures the tension between the two categories. The novel weaves historical facts with an imagined description of the final months for a young Catholic girl from a rural village of Southeast Poland during World War II. The cover is a photograph of the child, revealing her as simultaneously earnest and afraid. Despite her parents' unhappy marriage and poverty, the adolescent appreciates her life and the animals, including a mean guard dog kept on a chain. 

Germans conquer Poland in September 1939, an event unknown for the rural family until schools are closed and soldiers confiscate the family farm in summer of 1942 and shoot the father dead.  

Czeslawa and her mother arrive at Auschwitz on December 13, 1942, assigned identification numbers and endless work with sub-optimal tools. Conditions are horrific and the work is grueling, nonstop to the point that prisoners lose all strength and motivation. Perhaps the only comfort is mother and daughter share a cramped bed and hushed conversations at night. 

Thoughtful despite her lack of education, Czeslawa often frets about leaving behind the dog known as Pies, meaning “dog” in Polish. “Although she did not like the dog – she was afraid of him – she often dreams about him. In one of the dreams, she is walking through a field of wheat and the dog is following her. The dog is friendly and when she speaks to him, the dog wags his tail. Another thing that she remarks about the dog is that his eyes are different colors…. In the dream, Czeslawa thinks that this a sign of good luck and she wishes she had had time to free Pies.”  

In another dream, the dog has pups and when Czeslawa tries to retrieve one, the dog bites. And on another night, the girl wonders if the dog dreams of her. 

The mother tells stories, increasingly revealing more secrets from her own youth while reticent about talking about the farm or abusive husband. Eventually, the woman admits that the dog surely is dead. Yet the daughter persists, continuing to worry about the dog’s fate. “For some reason she cannot explain Czeslawa keeps thinking about the dog – the dog with no name.” 

And at another point, Czeslawa slips while working and a guard sets his dog loose. The dog bites and infection begins. The prisoners fear the camp's doctors and like other prisoners unable to work, weakened by dysentery, disease, malnutrition, injuries and more, Czeslawa is sent to the gas chambers.  

The mother died on February 18, 1943, at age 47. Czeslawa, 14, died the following month on March 12. 

The novel's title is based on the final words of the poem "Nostos" by Louise Glück, “We look at the world once, in childhood. The rest is memory.” The poem's title refers to the long journeys undertaken by the heroes of Greek literature and is tied to the Greek words for pain, travel and the longing for home and the past. 

Ripping the most vulnerable from their homes, separating families and disrupting lives, denying individuals due process, is pure evil. A child is mistreated, tortured, yet retains the compassion to worry about an unloved pet left behind. All humans are equally worthy of dignity and basic rights - and those capable of imposing physical and mental anguish on the most vulnerable in society are lacking in conscience and basic humanity. 

"At times, greed, revenge, selfishness, and dishonesty are being celebrated and even accepted as the norm, which creates an imbalance in our understanding of basic human morality," explains Diane Whitehead of Childhood Education International. "Our basic humanity and lifelong capacity to live successful and cooperative lives within societies begins in childhood. If we care about children and care about the continuation of our humanity, then we must do our part. Our children need examples of moral behavior as they grow and learn. How do we all – including teachers, parents, grandparents, caregivers, neighbors, business leaders, and government officials – model through our everyday actions that we value compassion, generosity, acceptance of others, honesty, and kindness?"

Children observe the actions of the adults surrounding them, judging and acting accordingly. Some will go along with the bullying and brutality while others have an inner strength to resist.  

One afternoon

 

The novel Idle Grounds by Krystelle Bamford captures a child’s perspective in this brief novel with minimal details, minimal plot, minimal characterization.  A few lovely passages describe a summer afternoon of childhood play while adults sit on porch, drinking and ignoring their children. 

The writing has a dreamlike quality, rambling about an afternoon for a group of cousins. The memory could belong to one individual or the collective. The setting is an unmarried aunt’s home, with a small patch of woods nearby, somewhat familiar but leaving plenty of strange questions that go unanswered. The children are both hyper and bored together, inventing challenges. The exact number of cousins is unknown. Only four “main players,” those who happen to be older or admired, are named. Others, including the narrator, are regarded as unimportant and also-rans, blurring together like a watercolor,  an exact count never given. 

The vague setting, the lack of names and details, creates an atmosphere of unease: “We didn’t know what to hope for, thing or nothing. Thing meant that our day, only somewhat extraordinary, would become truly remarkable… It opened things up in ways both surprising and permanent. Nothing, on the other hand, meant that we would need to go downstairs eventually an get ourselves a 7UP, start thinking about the 9 times tables or something along those lines.”    

Accuracy is constantly in question as the unnamed narrator relays childhood memories that mostly center on one afternoon. A brother is sure his 3-year-old sister has gone missing and the group sets out to search. The children switch quickly from cooperation to competition, compassion to cruelty. Clues about family disappointments and failures abound in overheard snippets of adult conversations, old photographs and claims over a mother's possessions.

The afternoon stretches out expansively, foreshadowing adult outcomes for the four named characters, and these adult careers and relationships are relegated to a few pages, meaningless when stacked next to that strange and adventuresome afternoon. Still, the novel delivers little in the way of suspense or motivation. The older children fail to escape the influences of a dysfunctional extended family.  Not by chance, Abi, the youngest child labeled as “missing,” achieves success as an artist. No trying to tag along for her. Age, stealth and an ability to vanish in that crowd of cousins lend protective distance from troubled family members. 

The book leaves many unanswered questions, and readers will give up caring. One afternoon does not make a life. The quest promises thrill but in the end the lingering memory and novel seem pointless. Children who flourish shake off childhood labels, anxieties and family issues. They move on and take control of the life they have now.      

Finally, the publisher made a terrible mistake by describing the novel as “a warped Nancy Drew detective story.” The phrase snag a few who developed a love a reading with that protagonist, but a false promise guarantees disappointment. Idle Grounds has little mystery, spunk or resolution.

Regrets and secrets

Hang onto every day as precious – that’s the theme of both The Life Impossible by Matt Haig and Sandwich by Catherine Newman. Both writers point out that each of us, at this moment, is both the oldest and youngest we’ll ever be. “If only we could always have the perspective of the future with us as we live that present,” one protagonist notes. Attitudes on age can be adjusted with new experiences.  

Both novels address aging and struggling with painful memories and regrets. In both, the protagonist has traveled to a vacation community – an inherited and modest Ibiza home in the first and a rented cottage on Cape Cod in the second. Secrets and new aspirations spill from the female protagonists. Both books engage the reader from the start, Sandwich with slapstick humor and Impossible Life with intrigue.

In Sandwich Rocky spends the week at the rickety Cape rental cabin with her husband, adult children who also welcome her elderly parents for two days. Rocky is gregarious, fun, and a tad narcissistic and frequently toys with the notion of seeking divorce from her generally capable husband who prides himself on not apologizing and manages to “look away from anything you don’t want to see.” The two argue often and playfully, and Rocky limits the secrets she shares with him. 

The boisterous family, constantly bantering, attract attention wherever they go – the beach, shops, or restaurants. The son’s girlfriend compares her large family with Rocky’s, describing them as fun and chaotic, but not “so … intentional the way you guys always seem.” 

Rocky cherishes the memories triggered by the annual stays at the cottage and enjoys hearing her children complain about the conveniences and décor.  “People insist you should be grateful instead of complaining? They maybe don’t understand how much gratitude one might feel about the opportunity to complain.” 

The Life Impossible is a darker book about a woman who mulls over regrets from years before. “The trouble with tragedy is that it tars everything that comes after,” observes Grace Winters, a retired math teacher, in her seventies, for whom the “unknown variable must always be found.”  She finds a theme in all she meets and identifies her own theme as guilt. She finds comfort in blaming herself for the death of a young son followed by an affair and cheating on a beloved husband: “Grief felt like the only way to keep close to them” and she sees “everyone on Earth as someone’s grief waiting to happen.” 

Two events at the start trigger motivation for Grace who who depressingly concedes, “I feel like I have a life inside me that needs to be lived and I am not living it.”  

First, Grace receives a distressing note from a former student about his own hardships, and the rest of the book follows as her response, self-analysis that she hopes will be useful. Maurice does not appear in the novel other than sending another note, and Grace strives to be both blunt and kind. “Sometimes in order to be helpful we have to give up the desire to be liked.”  She recalls Maurice, especially his propensity to say sorry for things he had not done.  “It is like an admission that everyone in the world is a little to blame for everything.” 

She becomes more accepting of her past, explaining that “one good thing about having regrets is that I no longer judge others too harshly.” And she warns him against “incredibly common” worry: “Along with loneliness it is the polluted air that most minds live in, the ting that deprives us of the present moment, trapping us in the past and future all at once.” 

Grace also receives notice from a law firm. An acquaintance from the start of both their teaching careers bequeathed Grace a small home on a busy roadway in Ibiza. Grace knew Christine briefly, opening her home one lonely Christmas night and encouraging the woman to pursue a singing career,  

With few friends or activities, Grace takes off for Ibiza to inspect the home. The change in scene initially does not help. “The problem was me. There was no escape from grief and loneliness. So long as I stayed in the same ageing body with my same curdled memories, I was my own life sentence.” 

Suspecting foul play, Grace moves out of her comfort zone making inquiries of the woman’s friends. The book takes odd turns into fantasy and telepathy and mind control, and Grace increasingly discovers she enjoys new people and experiences, moving beyond old ruts and choices. She seeks understanding rather than love. “There is no point in being loved if you are not understood. They are simply loving an idea of you they have in their mind. They are in love with love.” 

Recalling the relationship with her husband, she finds she is less resistant to close relationships and appreciates someone by her side who can be “a shock absorber to the madness of experience.”   

In both books, the protagonists assume that their own experiences will guide others, and other characters ensure that the self-absorption does not go too far. Abrupt withdrawal from old regrets and everyday problems, along with the release of secrets, can offer survival mechanisms. 

Predators and prey

 

Hauntingly beautiful and demonstrating the power of memory, The Fox Wife by Yangsze Choo makes it easy to suspend disbelief about creatures who transition between fox and human form in Manchuria, 1908. The author doles out just enough detail in this magical tale, foxes are charming, clever and ageless, for readers to understand the differences with humans while preserving a sense of mystery. Foxes are sly in getting what they want. The more impulsive ones are ruthless, impatient predators while others are more self-disciplined, resisting their nature and striving to live a full millennium. 

Foxes take control with flattery, companionship and feigned subservience. Some foxes are reckless and others like Snow, the protagonist, are cooperative and wary in society: “Nobody likes to feel a fool, and the downside of playing with people’s feelings is the whiplash fury of betrayal.”

Only a few humans, often near death, recognize they are under the watchful eyes of foxes: "Dark as a bottomless pool, like a lake under moonlight. Bao is falling, sinking. Images flicker past: Ears lifted and a sharp muzzle across endless waves of grass. A lonely shape trotting down a mountain. Blink and he’s back, staring into the eyes of this stranger. Unreadable eyes, grave yet inhuman. They pierce Bao to the depths of his soul, or perhaps that’s the knife wound in his side.”

Interactions between foxes and humans require a delicate balance. Fox emotions are intense. Snow, the protagonist and fox wife, seeks revenge for the death of her cub, wrested by its den by a hunter on assignment for a photographer. “Grief continually amazed me with its ability to resurface at inconvenient moments. Whether I was sleeping in the grass or walking beside railway tracks by myself, the wind blowing and the lonely sun shining down, it always found me.” To track the photographer, Snow takes a job as companion for an elderly woman whose family owns a popular medicine shop. An investigator also tracks the photographer after the death of a courtesan in an alley, a beautiful woman last seen with a foxlike man.

The two searches collide, and during their travels, the two women each encounter a past love. Snow meets her estranged husband whom she partially blames for the cub’s death: “it was a lot easier to consider Kuro dead to me than to deal with the pain that his presence reminded me of. I should have known better. What you bury eventually comes to light in some form or other.” Her employer Tagtaa, in her sixties, encounters the young boy whom she was once served as a companion when both were children. Bao’s choices often displeased his parents, a pattern that continued into his adulthood as he pursues a career as investigator rather than scholar. 

Bao’s parents had forbidden marriage with Tagtaa, a child of a Mongolian concubine, but he still felt attraction. “She’s aged but hasn’t changed. Over the years he’s observed this phenomenon in his old friends – though their bodies have weathered, stretched, or shrunk, the same soul peeks out from within.” Notably, both Bao and Tagtaa admire foxes after memorable encounters with the creatures in their youth. Bao's experience left him with the ability to discern truth from lies, aiding his investigative work. And another fox, possibly Kuro, rescued Tagtaa as a child. 

Tagtaa longs to meet a fox again though Kuro, the fox husband, urges caution. Tagtaa confides her belief that foxes are gods or spirts, but he cautions that not all foxes mean well. “It depends on what you want to believe. What’s important is the ability to tell truth from lies,” Kuro explains. “Or perhaps truth from what’s merely hope.” Snow, his wife, overhears the conversation: “Hope, of course, is the most painful thing in the universe. Clinging to a thin strand is the most agonizing way to live.”

Humans feel angry panic after being tricked by a fox. “That’s what leads to all those tales of disillusionment and discovering yourself naked, covered with fleas and eating rotting meat in an abandoned grave," Snow notes. "Of course that exact scenario seldom happens, but it’s a good metaphor for how people feel when they discover they’ve been duped. That’s why a careful fox refrains from unduly influencing others.”

Parental expectations, lost loves, class inequality interfere with the present day for each character. Intelligent and self-disciplined foxes and humans who admire them are keenly aware of the period’s class and gender inequality, thus connecting with readers by offering relevant and modern insights. The novel is a cautionary fable for divided societies where the corrupt show disdain for those who work hard, the spendthrifts who scoff at the savers, the impulsive mock the patient, and the ignorant willfully resent the success and guidance from those with expertise.  

Never-ending enigma

 

A Princess Diana impersonator with a sister who could be a twin, a precocious child raised in foster care, a cryptocurrency firm with organized crime connections all in Las Vegas – what could go wrong? 

Chris Bohjalian's The Princess of Las Vegas is a fast-paced mystery about a successful Princess Diana impersonator in a second-rate casino who is estranged from her sister after trauma with a stepfather followed by their mother’s death. Regardless of the hard feelings, the younger sister moves to Las Vegas with her precocious and newly adopted teenager, lured by a high-paying position with her boyfriend's crypto company. Meanwhile, the two brothers who own and operate the Buckingham Palace Casino are found dead in the space of a few days, suicides from all appearances, except that that the reader is witness to the first murder with the novel's early pages. 

Diana is popular among those who recall where they were on August 31, 1997, and the fictional Chrissy Dowling is a Las Vegas legend who relies on Adderall and Valium to get through two shows per night and days spent in a poolside cabana. She is intensely proud of her work, constantly researching the royal family and tweaking the show. She hopes that her tribute show touches “a chord of orphic remembrance,” reminding “us who we once were and, sometimes, where we once were emotionally and literally.” 

Still, the suicides followed by the death of Chrissy's love interest has her and other casino staff worried about losing their jobs. 

A lot of luck comes into play in the story – but in Las Vegas, that makes perfect sense. Often, we don't recognize the luck waiting before us.  “None of us, even when we are breathing our last, understand fully the role that chance will have played in our lives, the ways that what we supposed was good luck prevented us from experiencing better luck, or the way that a small misfortune saved us from a far worse one.” 

Princess Diana, a quiet, gentle and beautiful woman adored by the world but resented by her family, was an enigma and the contradictions of her life will continue to remain an inspiration for novelists for years to come. Consider Royal Escape, in which a princess yearns to flee the royal trap where security provides no protection at all. 

Bohjalian delivers a story with modern twists that dig deep into the mysteries of human nature and family angst.