THE LAKE by GERHARD ROTH SUMMARY AND ANALYSIS

THE LAKE, or, DER SEE by GERHARD ROTH

SUMMARY
Paul Eck is a representative for a pharmaceutical company who is travelling to various Doctors' offices and offering his drugs to them.  He takes many pills to improve his cognition, aid digestion, relieve allergies, induce drowsiness, and reduce pain, and is dependent on the drugs he takes.  Paul Eck's parents divorced 30 years prior to the start of the novel.  He has not seen his father since the divorce, although his father is wealthy from a hunting and fishing business and continued to pay for Eck's medical studies after they ceased contact.  Eck's father participated in the Hungarian resistance movement and was involved in smuggling guns from Switzerland through Hungary to Serbia.  Eck's mother committed suicide exactly one year before the novel begins, and Eck was forced to mop up his mother's blood after she'd died.
Eck takes a bus to a historic castle and accidentally wanders into a former concentration camp. The next day, he tries to sell drugs to Professor Basaglia at a medical clinic where there are many sick and hopeless people.  Eck meets two women in a cafe who pleasure him sexually and then he is robbed of his money, wallet, and passport by a group of men who were alerted by the women that Eck had money.  After he awakes, he sneaks across the border to return to his home and checks into a hotel to rest.  He decides to not accompany his father for a boating trip which Eck's father invited Eck to, and a storm breaks out on the day of the trip.
The next day, Eck reads in the newspaper that his father went missing in the storm.  Eck visits a friend of his who is a mechanic and takes Eck on a boat trip across a river where Eck sees a trailer park which rents rooms by the night, and Eck checks into the trailer park.  He then goes to see his family doctor who uses acupuncture, and spiritual healing, as well as brutal surgery and recommends his drugs.
A boy named Hermann asks Eck for a ride and Eck obliges, first stopping at a hunting store to buy a gun using a false identity and steps outside where two policemen find Eck and ask him to come to the morgue to look for Eck's father's body.  After identifying the body, Paul Eck is announced as a suspect for the murder of his own father, and told to stay in the trailer park by police.  He is approached by a strange man who knows that Eck was invited to the lake by his father and tells Eck to be careful.
Eck visits his grandfather's home in Hungary and is followed by a blue Toyota for the whole trip.  A police officer emerges from the Toyota the next day and accompanies Paul Eck and his friend named Robert on a boat ride while they look for a clue Eck's friend claimed to have seen.  While they are gone, Eck's trailer is stripped and searched.  A journalist who is interested in the story approaches Eck and offers to help piece together information on the case.  The next doctor Eck visits is named Dr. Goriupp and tells Eck of his father's involvement in the gun trade.
A gypsy who previously worked for Eck's uncle finds the car in which Eck's father was murdered before  the body was chopped up and put in the ocean.  Eck sees his stepbrother there and they plan to go fishing to discuss family matters the next morning.  On their fishing trip, Eck and his stepbrother fight and capsize their boat, resulting in a cut on Eck's forehead.
To get his wound stitched, Eck returns to Dr Goriupp.  While stitching Eck's head, the doctor begins coughing blood, and Eck hallucinates that the doctor is a cannibalistic monster, causing Eck to shoot the doctor in the eye.  A short while later, Eck awakes in the gypsy's home after experiencing drug-induced amnesia.  When Eck returns home he meets the journalist who tells him the police suspect a military man named Laposa of shooting both Dr. Goriupp and Eck's father.  Eck and the journalist go to the military base where they witness Laposa being arrested and confessing to killing Eck's father.
A gun fight breaks out in the trailer next to Eck's trailer which sparks a fire.  Eck takes some LSD he was given by a Swiss colleague.  Paul Eck and Robert fly away in Robert's plane.

ANALYSIS
There are many references to genocide in this novel.  Eck visits both a Jewish and a Serbian cemetery.  He also sees a former concentration camp, a Swastika, and a racist meeting in his journeys.  Paul Eck clearly feels guilty about the crimes of Nazis and the Bosnian Serbs.  Eck mentions that he feels like the stains of the past are haunting him presently when he discusses cleaning up his mother's blood.  I believe the purpose of the thematic inclusion of wartime material is to emphasize that the aftermath of genocide still haunts Europe.
Some silverfish infest Eck's trailer.  Although they appear to fall with gravity after the murder is resolved, Eck sees them the next day when he opens the Bible, which he falsely swore on earlier in the novel.  He leaves the trailer where the silverfish are contained.  The silverfish resemble most closely his conscience, and after the trailer park burns down, it is implied that Eck feels relieved as he hallucinates becoming one with the birds under the influence of LSD.
Throughout the novel, Eck experiences many discomforts within his body.  The reaction of his body to alcohol, and drugs, is well documented.  Every stomach ache Eck endures in The Lake is well documented and it is clear that he likes to tense his abs, and feel warm and full.  Why Roth shared these facts about Eck, I don't know.  To be honest, spending so much time as a reader swimming around inside of Eck's body as well as spotty translation made this book sort of dull for me.  Next week, I promise by book will not have anything to do with genocide, as that seems to be a recurring theme in my selections.

• pharmaceutical representative goes on trip to sell prescription drugs
• the representative's estranged father is secretly involved in the illegal gun trade
• the representative's father is murdered and the representative becomes a suspect
• the police discover that the representative's father was murdered by someone involved in the illegal gun trade

SOURCE

Roth, Gerhard. The Lake. Trans. Michael Winkler. Riverside, CA: Ariadne, 2000. Print. Book about a man suspected of killing his estranged father.

THE PRIVILEGES by JONATHAN DEE SUMMARY AND ANALYSIS

THE PRIVILEGES by JONATHAN DEE


SUMMARY
A young couple, Cynthia and Adam Morey, are getting married in Pittsburgh, US.  The bride has chosen an unpopular bridesmaid.  In total, the wedding costs $38,000 American, and everything is being paid for by Cynthia's stepmother and father.  Adam's parents buy the couple a honeymoon in Mexico during which Cynthia becomes pregnant with a girl named April.
One year later Adam and Cynthia are living in New York, US, and have another child named Jonas.  Adam worked at Morgan Stanley, but quit to work at a smaller firm named 'Perrini Capital'.  The Moreys send their children to private schools which cost $60,000 each year, and Cynthia likes to buy her children expensive items.
Cynthia is a stay at home mom.  Adam's boss at Perrini capital takes Adam, Cynthia, and the children to his vacation home for the weekend.  Cynthia is offended by the boss' wife and the family leaves early.  They are jealous of the boss' luxurious home and expensive car, the boss promises Adam that one day he will be just as rich, and Cynthia encourages Adam to pursue the wealth they've seen.  Adam wants to succeed, but not become a clone of his boss.
Cynthia's mother calls her and asks her to pick up her stepsister named Deborah from the hospital.  Deborah was in the hospital because she overdosed on drugs.  Cynthia has to rush to take the children to the dentist, and briefly loses them in the New York train system.  After this event, years pass without the two speaking to eachother; this silence is a result of mutual ambivalence toward eachother.
Adam feels pressured by Cynthia to increase his earnings.  He begins using illegal insider information to profit from stock market put and call options.  The illegal network which develops involves switching prepaid phones each month for Adam and his partner, offshore bank accounts, and stock broker accounts in fake names.  After Adam is fired from his job at Perini because the boss is angry that Adam doesn't want to take over Perini Capital and suspects him of plotting to start his own firm and steal Perini's analysts, Adam confesses his insider trading to Cynthia, who applauds his bravery and diligence.
By this point, April is 15 and Jonas is 14.  One of April's friends, Robin, hides at the Moreys after being beaten by her father.  Cynthia allows April and her friends to go to parties and drink alcohol. Jonas is in a band which he wants to call, 'The Privileges'.  Robin's mother commits suicide.
Jonas goes on to attend the University of Chicago where he feels divided from the rest of the student body because of his family's wealth.  Nikki is the name of Jonas' girlfriend.  April visits Jonas and meets Nikki. Later, April goes clubbing in New York with Russians, taking drugs and drinking alcohol, and the driver of the car April is in crashes into a van.  She is not hurt in the car crash.  Jonas happens to see April by the side of the road while he is shopping the next day, and takes her home.
Adam has opened up his own hedge fund which is preparing to file for its own IPO.  The Moreys begin receiving unwanted media attention and commit to getting April out of the clubbing scene.  Cynthia's father falls ill in Florida, US, and a stranger calls on his behalf asking Cynthia for money, which she denies, but agrees to go to Florida and assist her father emotionally and financially.  April and Adam return from a business trip in China to Florida.  Cynthia's father's cardiac problems progress in unison with dementia.
Jonas is working on a Master's thesis in art and goes to the apartment of an artist he likes.  The artist, named Joseph Novak, beats Jonas with a pipe and drags Jonas into the apartment.  Cynthia is calling Jonas but Novak throws away Jonas' cell phone and Jonas is afraid, so he stays in Novak's apartment.  As Novak finishes an elaborate drawing, Jonas gets up and leaves the apartment.

ANALYSIS
This book offers a unique insight into the lives of the richest people.  Through Jonas' wrestling with stereotypes, Dee depicts rich people as complex human beings, rather than contemptuous, carbon-copy moneybags on two feet.
There is a persistent theme of the Christian religion throughout the novel.  Cynthia repeats to herself, 'God gives you nothing you can't handle'.  Her father prepares for battle in a war flashback in his hospital bed as he is about to die, preparing him for his last fight.  Jonas discovers his strength as he is pushed to the limit by an attacker.  April, who felt as though she was shortening her useless and boring life with drugs and partying, receives a speech about keeping faith from her father.
In the beginning of the book, April asks her father where they come from, and the father says his family is from England, and the mother's from Russia.  April meets up with Russian drug dealers and her father buys an expensive flat in London, GBR.  I doubt Dee was implying that Russians are inferior to Englishmen, but if that's not what he was implying, I'm not sure what his purpose in including those details was.
A suspiciously coincidental sequence of events in the Moreys' lives wrap themselves up in an equally suspicious neat little bow about staying positive.  Unrealistic and corny, but positive.  The book kept me entertained and left me feeling better than when I started reading it.

• Man with family is pressured into making more money
• Through illegal means, he builds a legal Hedge Fund empire
• The man's wife's father becomes ill in the hospital
• While the man's son is kidnapped, the son's grandfather is on the verge of death
• The son escapes his kidnapper

SOURCE

Dee, Jonathan. The Privileges: A Novel. New York: Random House, 2010. Print.Book about a family keeping their faith amidst struggles in their climb up the social ladder.

1985: WHAT HAPPENS AFTER BIG BROTHER'S DEATH by GYORGY DALOS SUMMARY AND ANALYSIS

1985 by GRORGY DALOS 

SUMMARY

This book is told through 3 memoirs and various newspaper articles and official documents.  The authors of the memoirs are Winston Smith, James O'Brien, and Julia Miller.

Big Brother died on December 10th, 1984, after a brief period during which he showed signs of recovery.  He was the commander of a country called Oceania.

O'Brien employs Smith to command the staff of a propaganda newsletter extolling the virtues of Oceania.  This newsletter, called the TLS, forms the beginning of the resistance against the thought police.

2 factions initially fought to replace Big Brother: The Aluminists, led by Big Sister, and the Paper faction.  While the Paper faction wants peace, the Aluminists want to keep fighting.  A public meeting is held to discuss the future where the public demands better leadership.

The TLS begins to publish sentimental pieces which trigger a response in the community.  Big Sister demands the instigators be arrested by the thought police but is killed by the thought police because they fear she will cause rebellion.  When her Aluminist counterparts threaten to release the number of people killed or imprisoned by the thought police, the thought police begin releasing those in their custody.

A Shakesperean play is effected, the first play which was not  propaganda piece to be performed.  Citizens revolted against dissenting thought policemen in the audience.  The TLS staff and their supporters form the Intellectuals Reform Association, or, IRA.

After signing the peace treaty, Oceania lost all of its colonial empire to Eurasia, and the 2 million unemployed colonial soldiers who return home cause crime and food shortage, so that the government delivers food according to level of unrest to suppress revolt.  The IRA demand a 10-point reform including the dissolution of the thought police, an end to propaganda and anti-freedom campaigns, and the reduction of army size.

Working-class Muslims begin rioting in the city and the IRA teams up with them to secure more social liberties.  The remaining thought police government holds a contest for citizen-inspired policy reforms in response. 

Together, the IRA and working-class overthrow the thought police and seize power.  However, they are quickly overthrown by the old thought police.  In order to compromise with the people, the new Oceanian government promotes social liberties.  Winston Smith and the leader of the Muslims are executed.

ANALYSIS

Obviously, the events of this novel follow those of 1984, a book by George Orwell.  Information about 1984 by George Orwell is readily available and can be easily accessed using any search engine.  This book does make sense without its predecessor.

The revolution of the IRA in this novel is compared to the Russian and French Revolutions.  Repression is mocked as people hurriedly release emotions quite different from the feelings they expressed under Big Brother's dictatorship.  Dalos paints O'Brien in a sympathetic light.  While dictatorships and oppressive governments are awful, the people enforcing these laws are human like the people they oppress.  Deep down, everyone seems to want freedom in this novel.

The alliance of an organization named the IRA and the Muslims caught my eye in this novel.  While the IRA and terrorist organizations such as the Taliban and Al-Qaeda are sometimes compared, they share little in common.  Thankfully, no psychopath such as Osama Bin-Laden has come to power in Ireland, which is why the level of "terrorism" committed by the IRA consists mostly of graffiti currently, while car bombs and other violent attacks are an everyday occurrence in the Middle East, where the Taliban and Al-Qaeda are based.  The IRA stands for Irish Republican Association in real life, and was formed by Protestants and Catholics who sought to overthrow the British colonial rule in Ireland.  There was a period in Ireland when the Loyalists, who advocated for British rule both in religion and government, fought against the Republicans, each using terrorist tactics against eachother, attacking bars and other meeting areas.  However, Dalos does not compare the IRA to Muslims in a negative light.  I enjoyed his comparison of the struggle for religious freedom in the Muslim community to the struggles of the Catholic community in Britain.  Additionally, Dalos  named the Muslim and Catholic organization an Intellectual association, implying that he respects the intelligence of Muslims and Catholics, Irish or otherwise.  His depictions were well-informed and respectful.

• The leader of a dictatorship dies
• An Intellectual Reform Association forms and promotes social freedom
• The Reform movement is quelled but the government implements more liberal policies

Dalos, Gyorgy. 1985. Trans. Stuart Hood and Estella Schmid. New York: Pantheon, 1983. Print. Book about the aftermath of Big Brother's death.

THE PATIENCE STONE by ATIQ RAHIMI SUMMARY AND ANALYSIS

THE PATIENCE STONE, or, SYNGE SABOUR by ATIQ RAHIMI

SUMMARY
A man and a woman live together in a wartorn village.  The notable background of the story is unfolded through the woman's flashbacks and are as follows:
The man was a hero in a religious war.  The woman was promised to the man at the age of 17 by her father who was infatuated with the idea of his daughter marrying a hero.  Before they got married, the woman was captured by a religious merchant who tied her up in a basement and forced her to have sex with many men.  When the hero returned from war and first met his new wife, he did not acknowledge her, he merely sat down next to her in silence, claiming her as though she was a possession.  Not until 3 years after they were married did they first have sex, and because she was on her period she bled, which the hero took to be proof of virginity.  During a battle, the hero was shot in the neck, yet he miraculously lived in a comatose state.
In the present, the man sits in the living room, attached to an IV and breathing tube, staring absently at the wall.  Although the woman tries to keep her 2 daughters away from the man, one of the daughters sneaks in and complains that she is not allowed to see her father, and takes the tube out of his mouth long enough for a fly to dart in, which the hero does not notice.  The woman increasingly laments the countless prayers she offers to God as she takes care of the hero injured in a holy war.  The people of the village keep time by the cycle of prayers they are instructed to make.  While the woman recounts the story of their first intercourse, she draws menstrual blood onto her finger, and jams it into the man's beard, insisting it is clean.
The woman begins to question her faith.  An old, mysterious woman appears, babbling incoherently.  Religious soldiers embark on a raid of the neighborhood and find the old woman, and break into the main characters' home and steal the man's wedding band and Koran, allowing the hero to live only because they see he is a good Muslim.  The children play in the rubble, but are sent to stay with their aunt for their safety.  The woman laments that her Koran is stolen.
The woman tells the man that she is upset about their history; and tells him he has become her patience stone, listening to her stories.  The woman recounts her mother's story about a King who kills all of his newborn daughters because he wants a son.  The Queen speaks to one of the daughters who is magical and is told she will inherit a grand realm if she saves the daughter.  After the Queen runs away, the King goes on a warmongering quest for her, and eventually the Queen's realm prepares to do battle against the King's invading force.  Instead of a traditional ending, the woman says that this story leaves the listener's bias to its own devices.
Another Religious force sweeps the area and the woman hides the hero.  When the soldiers are gone, she tells the hero the story of her rape.  He rises from his comatose state, and the woman proclaims that it is a miracle, but then her husband murders her.  The book ends with a fly buzzing around the dead woman's body.

ANALYSIS
While the woman believes the tables have been turned on the hero and he now serves her instead of her serving him, it still appeared to me as though she was getting a raw deal by tending to him while he contributed nothing.  The stories told by this woman exposed a difficulty in being forced into a situation and then accused of being unholy because of it.  Unfortunately, the hero, soldiers, and merchant, were strong enough that they could choose to overpower and eventually kill her.
The recounted story about the cat suggests that the woman was seen as a pet, like a cat, with which her father could do whatever he pleased.  Bearing a great similarity to Henry the 8th of England, who killed his wives if they gave birth to a daughter, the King from the woman's mother's story is incredibly cruel and immoral, also treating woman as though they are less than human.  Asserting a strong belief in one's cause is emphasized by the need to imagine your own ending to the mother's story.  In the world of the mother's story, if you do not believe you will win, you may lose.
This story feels less like a didactic message and more like a slice of life.  It is tragic, and what is most unjust about the sexual relations in the story is that the hero cannot even be asked to stay in a coma, the easiest state to exist in, in order to give his wife moral support, and rises from the dead just to kill her because, in his mind, she allowed herself to be raped.

• man who has mistreated his wife becomes her patience stone in a coma
• woman is harassed by men and then blamed for allowing herself to be mistreated
• man rises from his coma to murder his wife for being impure

Rahimi, Atiq. The Patience Stone: Sang-e Saboor. Trans. Polly McLean. New York: Other, 2009. Print. Book about a man who becomes his wife's patience stone.