Hannah has never known any kind of affection from her mother, Susan. So when Sina joins the Kramer family as a domestic worker, the child instantly latches on to her for love and attention. She also dotes on her grandmother, her Bobba, spending lots of time in the company of the older woman, Leah, combing her hair and listening to stories of her life in the shtetl in Lithuania.
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We all know that we shouldn't judge a book by its cover. But the cover of this new edition of the 1966 Japanese novella The Doctor's Wife tempted me to do just that. It is bright red, wrapped in forest green, adorned with the soft-focus image of a woman in a simple orange obi, no doubt the doctor's wife herself. Small enough to tuck into the hand, the book's design is both restrained and dramatic, like the story itself.
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Sara Highbury, the manager of a Cape Town, South Africa boarding house, lives her life in the past. She is haunted by a man named Herbert Wakeford, the love of her life who suffered from a degenerative brain condition. One day not long after Herbert's death, another of Sara's lovers, Amin Hafferjee, pays her an unexpected visit, and Sara proceeds to tell him her life's story.
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Every once in a while you come across a small gem of a novel, a novella really, that just captivates you: Rebecca West's The Return of the Soldier comes to mind or Chingiz Aïtmatov's Jamilia. They draw you in, mesmerize you a little and, before you realize it, you're on the last page. Milena Agus' From the Land of the Moon is just such a book.
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In the beginning was nothing, and this nothing had neither form nor substance—it was nothing other than what it was. So begins this autobiographical novel of the author's first three years of life, which was originally published as "Métaphysique des Tubes" ("The Metaphysics of Tubes") in 2000, and released in English translation with a far less apt title two years later.
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