The beginning: The first chapter of Half Blood Blues won me over completely. One of my favorite books, Sunshine, begins with the line, It was a dumb thing to do but it wasn’t that dumb, and although that is not an eloquent description of a phenomenon that worries me greatly, it is an exact description of it. You just never know when you will make a choice that you think is a little dumb, a little risky, and that choice that you thought was going to be nothing (the way most of your choices are every day!) will turn out to be the whole ballgame.

That’s how Half-Blood Blues starts. A hungover half-black trumpeter called Hiero, living in occupied Paris, has finished a discouraging recording session and he wants some milk. He and our narrator, Sid Griffiths, go across town to get some milk at the only store that’s open at that hour. Sid goes into the back to be sick, and while he’s back there, the Nazis come in, and Hiero doesn’t have his papers, and he’s taken away.

From there, the book tells the story of Sid and Hiero and their band, and how they got to occupied Paris, and what happened that three of their original number were missing. In the present day (well, 1992), it tells the story of a now-old Sid, who goes to Berlin with another surviving band member, Chip, to watch a documentary about Hiero for which they provided interviews.

The end (spoilers in this section only, so skip it if you don’t want to know!): Esi Edugyan must know my heart, because the end is the same as the beginning. In the end, we discover that Sid, desperate to make this recording that he knew was going to be something special because Hiero was something special, took delivery of Hiero’s papers (including a visa to get him into Switzerland), but hid them. He thought, “We just need a few hours, just one good goddamn take.” In the present day, he admits this to Chip and to Hiero (oh, Hiero’s alive, by the way; you find that out a few chapters in), and Hiero doesn’t forgive him but he doesn’t not forgive him.

The whole: Half Blood Blues is a book about music more than it is a book about World War II. That said, when Edugyan takes the time to evoke the setting, she does a marvelous job of exploring the strange, uncertain status of black Germans and black non-Germans in the early years of the Second World War. Where Chip and Sid can walk relatively freely in Germany and France, as Americans, Hiero is liable at any moment to be taken by the Nazis, charged with a crime he did not commit, and sent to a concentration camp.

While the central conflict of the book is the question of whether Sid had a hand in Hiero’s capture, Edugyan creates suspense wonderfully by starting her 1942 story at the end. The reader knows from the start that Hiero will be taken, and that only four people remain to make a very important recording, and that one version of an important recording will be kept. When the book returns us to the weeks leading up to the recording and Hiero’s capture, there are six band members and no particular mention of recording a track. The importance of the song is tangled up with the band’s attrition and the ever-growing power of the Nazi regime. It’s wonderfully done.

Cover report: I like the record on the American cover, with the Nazi insignia above it; really, this is a book about music, not a book about war. The British cover is a generic war/Paris/nostalgia sort of book cover. American cover wins.

affiliate links: Amazon, B&N, Book Depository

The post Review: Half-Blood Blues, Esi Edugyan appeared first on Reading the End.

Episode 16

Or if you wish, you can find us on iTunes (and if you enjoy the podcast, give us a good rating! We appreciate it very very much).

Here are the contents of the podcast if you’d like to skip around:

Starting at 1:16 – Why is World War II such a recurringly popular setting for literature? What are some of our most favorite World War II books in all the land? Weigh in if you wish, and tell us some World War II books we should check out! (Please forgive me for sounding a little like my mouth is full in parts of this segment. My sister had made lemon cream cheese king cake, and it was insanely good.)

4:03 – I had a professor in England who gave a lecture about the American Revolution, and he looked very woeful when he talked about how damaging the American Revolution was to the British psyche. I felt terribly guilty. I just want y’all to know that’s what I was thinking about here.

Starting at 15:22 (ish) – We review Esi Edugyan’s award-winning novel Half-Blood Blues, a story about jazz musicians in Nazi Germany in 1940 and in post-Communist Berlin in 1992. Highly recommended!

18:10 – Here’s the bit of Half-Blood Blues I’m talking about:

“Boys,” he said smoothly. “I’d like to stand you a drink.”

 

I was in love. Pure and simple. This place, with its stink of sweat and medicine and perfume; these folks, all gussied up never mind the weather — this, this was life to me. Forget Sunday school and girls in white frocks. Forget stealing from corner stores. This was it, these dames swaying their hips in shimmering dresses, these chaps drinking gutbucket hooch. The gorgeous speakeasy slang. I’d found what my life was meant for.

Starting at 31:00 – Randon wrote us a game. You should play along because it’s fun. Randon describes a movie villain and his/her plan; and we must guess whether the villain is German or British; what the movie is; and the name of the villain. If you get the names of the villains, color us impressed. We struggled with that section.

Starting at 44:41 – Whiskey Jenny gives her recommendation for next time, The Golem and the Jinni! We’ll see you back here in two weeks to find out what we both thought of it.

Starting at 45:36 – Closing remarks and outro.

Credits
Producer: Captain Hammer
Photo credit: The Illustrious Annalee
Song is by Jeff MacDougall and comes from here.

The post Reading the End Bookcast, Ep.16: World War II in Books; Half-Blood Blues; and German or British? appeared first on Reading the End.