Thursday, October 18, 2018

Unearthed: Love, Acceptance, and Other Lessons from an Abandoned Garden
by Alexandra Risen
Published by Penguin Random House Canada
Paperback
August 2016, 271 pages

Alexandra Risen's father dies just as she and her husband purchase a nondescript house set atop a natural gorge in the middle of the city. The garden is choked with weeds and crumbling structures. Over the years, as she undertakes the replanting, it stirs memories of her childhood when a nearby forest was her only escape from an empty home life.

As Risen beats back the bushes to unveil the garden’s mysteries, her mother has a stroke and develops dementia. On one of her last visits home, she discovers an envelope of yellowed documents that helps her piece together some of her parents' unknown story.

Uprooted from the Ukraine to work in Nazi Germany during the Second World War, her father and mother met and married in a Displaced Persons camp before emigrating to Edmonton. They never discussed their troubled past. Her father shut himself into a safe, silent world and spoke few words to Alex during his lifetime. Her mother sought refuge in her garden amidst her vegetables, flowers and fruit trees.

As Risen toils in her own garden, lifelong resentments and misunderstandings are replaced with memories and connections to her parents. Organized around various flowers, trees and shrubs that evoke particular memories, Unearthed is an affecting account of tangled family relationships, reconciliation and the healing power of nature.

Source: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.ca/books/538849/unearthed-by-alexandra-risen/9780143198956 

More about Alexandra Risen:
http://alexandrarisen.com/

https://www.thestar.com/life/2016/08/06/toronto-author-unearths-abandoned-garden-and-finds-her-past.html

An Evening with Alexandra Risen
On October 19, 2018, Alexandra Risen graciously participated in a Rozmova Book Club gathering to discuss her memoir, Unearthed. She revealed her personal story openly, generously sharing details that don't appear in her book: her quiet dream to be a writer when it wasn't accepted in her parents' household; her intriguing writing process that transformed 20 stories about her garden into her memoir; her gratitude for the guidance she received from the University of Toronto Creative Writing Program; the direction her agent offered on facing her family's past; and the unwavering support her husband and son provided. Alexandra said the book was the result of looking deeply into her past and became a journey of understanding. Rozmova members are very grateful for Alexandra's insights and wholehearted participation in our discussion. Congratulations on a very good read!







Monday, July 9, 2018

Red Notice: A True Story of High Finance, Murder, and One Man's Fight for Justice

by Bill Browder
Published by Simon & Schuster, New York
Hardcover
February 2015, 399 pages

Synopsis
A real-life political thriller about an American financier in the Wild East of Russia, the murder of his principled young tax attorney, and his dangerous mission to expose the Kremlin’s corruption.

Bill Browder’s journey started on the South Side of Chicago and moved through Stanford Business School to the dog-eat-dog world of hedge fund investing in the 1990s. It continued in Moscow, where Browder made his fortune heading the largest investment fund in Russia after the Soviet Union’s collapse. But when he exposed the corrupt oligarchs who were robbing the companies in which he was investing, Vladimir Putin turned on him and, in 2005, had him expelled from Russia.


In 2007, a group of law enforcement officers raided Browder’s offices in Moscow and stole $230 million of taxes that his fund’s companies had paid to the Russian government. Browder’s attorney Sergei Magnitsky investigated the incident and uncovered a sprawling criminal enterprise. A month after Sergei testified against the officials involved, he was arrested and thrown into pre-trial detention, where he was tortured for a year. On November 16, 2009, he was led to an isolation chamber, handcuffed to a bedrail, and beaten to death by eight guards in full riot gear.
Browder glimpsed the heart of darkness, and it transformed his life: he embarked on an unrelenting quest for justice in Sergei’s name, exposing the towering cover-up that leads right up to Putin. A financial caper, a crime thriller, and a political crusade, Red Notice is the story of one man taking on overpowering odds to change the world.


Source: https://www.amazon.com/Red-Notice-Finance-Murder-Justice/

Saturday, April 28, 2018

The House of Widows by Askold Melnyczuk

by Askold Melnyczuk
Published by Graywolf Press, Minneapolis, MN
Paperback
March 4, 2008, 256 pages

Synopsis
A novel of intrigue that is played across decades, continents, and generations by the celebrated, New York Times Notable author of Ambassador of the Dead.

Late one night, a week after Father's suicide, I finished sweeping the bulk of my inheritance into four giant trash bags, and heaved them into the dumpster at the construction site around the corner from his apartment. Then I sat down at the two-person coffee table in the middle of his kitchen, the fluorescent light loud as cicadas, and examined the three things I'd kept.
 
The three things that James kept are his father's British military uniform, an oversize glass jar, and a letter written in a language he can't read. They become the keys to unlocking the door on a past James never imagined while growing up amid the security of Boston's north shore, and they send him on an odyssey across England, Austria, and Ukraine. Along the way, he meets his dying aunt Vera, the matriarch of a mysterious branch of the family. His mission puts him face-to-face with the international sex trade, a displaced Palestinian girl with streaked pink hair and attitude to spare, and a violent world in which he is ultimately implicated. From old America, new Europe, and the timeless Middle East, James learns what it means to live in the webbed world of the twenty-first century.

In The House of Widows, Askold Melnyczuk offers a searing exploration of the individual's role in the inexorable assault of history.

Source: https://www.amazon.com/House-Widows-Oral-History/dp/1555974910