Don Sawyer's 3 favorite reads in 2024

Over the years I’ve read hundreds, maybe thousands of books. Many of them have moved me, stretched me, entertained me, but there are only a few I wandered into and realized early on that I was not going to get out of this one unchanged. These were books that transformed me and the way I saw the world: Tolkien’s books, LeGuin’s The Left Hand of Darkness, Kingsolver’s The Poisonwood Bible, Leslie Marmon Silko’s Ceremony, Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and a few others. And now, Cloud Cuckoo Land.

There is no need to laud the stunning inventiveness of the author, who manages to create not one new world we inhabit but three, all deftly interconnected by the unlikely thread of simple fable passed from generation to generation. This has been done by dozens of reviewers more adept than I. Instead I want to comment on the sheer power of the book, its capacity to take us places and share lives we would otherwise never dreamed of.

While the mysterious document -- itself a fascinating story within a story-- wends its way through a narrative that spans a thousand years, its message is less important than the lives it touches.
And what lives. While the periods and characters are convincing to various degrees (the scenes inside and outside Constantinople scream authenticity), their sum is staggering, adding up to nothing short of a cross-section of humanity and human history. Each character is drawn so vividly and infused with such essential, defining human traits that we bond with them to the point the reader/character divide disappears. You do no identify with these characters; you are these characters, feeling their every fear, hope, love, aspiration, dread. Sharing their integrity, determination, inventiveness, courage.

The blurb on the back suggests that the book “transports us to worlds so dramatic and immersive that we forget, for a time, our own.” I would only disagree to this extent: those worlds ultimately shine a light, a searingly bright light, on our world.

It is a cautionary tale, a hopeful tale. And a wonderful read..

I really enjoyed this book. I haven't been a student of China for 40 year and haven't been there for even longer, but Klingbourg hits all the right notes in this exciting murder mystery set in modern Chinese society. While the case itself is fascinating, the glimpses we get into contemporary politics and lifestyle ring absolutely true.

An Asian academic and former resident of the region, Klingbourg shows us a society that is riven with corruption, influenced by political and monied interests, has a population more interested in soap operas (along with other fascinating facts, Klingbourg seamlessly informs us that 90% of Chinese households have televisions and that China produces more films than the US) then social change. That has a more-or-less functioning legal system populated by personnel and bureaucrats, some of whom are highly principled and others that are inept and motivated by greed and ambition. It is neither a grinding dictatorship nor a functioning democracy.

In other words, a society in many ways much like our own.

Throughout, Klingbourg builds in essential elements of Chinese tradition, from the enduring principles of Confucianism to the transcendent teachings of Taoism. Perhaps most strikingly, he begins each chapter with a quotation from Mao Tse-tung (using the modern spelling). Some are clearly ironic (Klingbourg opens one chapter with Mao's admonition that "We must have faith in the masses and faith in the Party" and proceeds to pit our indomitable hero Inspector Lu Fei against a despicable, corrupt, debauched Party official), but many are provocative and intelligent, reminding us that Mao was one of the great revolutionary thinkers and leaders of our era.

Overall, the book feels authentic and insightful, providing the reader with an exciting murder mystery (though you may well figure out the culprit a bit soon) along with glimpses of a country from a perspective we rarely see. Despite global politics that present China as a monolithic and dangerous foe, Klingbourg emphasizes that it is a country with a long history, rich culture and more than a billion individuals living their lives on a daily basis with many of the same challenges, joys and complications we all experience.

From whatever perspective you read Separate Things, it is a remarkable book. If you too have OCD, as I do, its fierce honesty is both refreshing and agonizing. If you have a friend or relative who suffers from OCD, you may, finally, get a glimpse into the terrifying world they struggle with every day and find greater patience and understanding in your efforts to provide them with help and support. And if you are simply interested in OCD from a psychological or intellectual perspective, here it is, laid out for you from the inside by an insider.

Sometimes the use of “us” is used as a way to divide humanity into hostile camps, to weaponize identity and justify prejudice. Us and them. But here Berry’s use of “us” (vs “outsiders”) is a door into the intimate hell that those who are not one of “us” cannot access, or at least without a lot of help. And that is precisely what Berry does – this is a story about “us” by “us.”
Using a string of loosely chronological sketches from her life, we see her OCD play out in increasingly destructive and limiting ways, from early horror of warts and contamination to weeks in mental wards when her OCD (enhanced by bipolarity) has grabbed the wheel to the point she is no longer functional.

This is all written in superb prose, lean, often beautiful, and unnervingly effective. Abstract terrors are neither ignored nor simplified; Berry instead presents them in all their irrational, unreasonable bafflement, combining straight prose with poetic images, discursive thoughts, mad dashes into and out of sanity.

This, she says, is the way it is folks, at least for me. And we believe her.
Despite the backdrop of emotional and psychological agony, Berry is never the victim. The sufferer, yes, but she is always seeking to get better, to be better. And she bows with gratitude to those who have worked so hard to help, most prominently her mother, whose unwavering love and support is woven throughout the book. (Berry writes, “The uncertainty, the hopelessness – you made it bearable.”) But there are others – her psychiatrist (“Thank you for being the one to save me more than once), friends in and outside of mental wards, her husband, and her daughter.

There are villains too, of course, but even they are generally viewed more with disappointment than bitterness, their failures, insensitivities, and damaging behaviour due more to being “outsiders” than malicious.

Courage is the theme of this book. Not only in the author’s dedication to fighting her disease -- no matter how debilitating, no matter how hopeless or devastating -- with every means available to her, but also in her decision to write an account of OCD with such unsparing honesty. As dark as the book can be, Berry’s courage surges through it like a silver thread. We know from page one that this woman is not a quitter. She is not going to give up.

That doesn’t mean that by the end all is resolved amicably and the author lives happily ever after. That’s not how OCD (or life for that matter) works. What we do get instead is far more – more honest, more courageous, more real, more hopeful: “We run together, always toward the light, for I’ve conquered survival mode. Now it’s time to live.”