Epic of Gilgamesh Disappoints

Exotic Setting

World War II remains strong in the consciousness of writers, who these days seem to find new and unusual stories showing how people were affected in those times. Helga Ruebsamen, who was born in 1934, writes about a five-year-old girl who is being raised on Java by her father, mother and uncle. The latter comes to live with the family after showing up unexpectedly.

The Song and the Truth focuses on this child, who lives a “normal” life during the day, then when the grownups go to sleep, focuses on a mysterious world filled with a merged fantasy and reality. Suddenly, the family abandons their tropical paradise and, commanded by her grandfather, goes back to Holland, their native home.

The year is 1939 and young Lulu’s family is Jewish. Going into hiding, Lulu must quickly adapt to the new and dangerous circumstances. As her mother has decamped for London, the child must depend on her father’s love and her strong sense of courage

Author Ruebsamen had a best-seller with The Song and the Truth (Alfred A. Knopf) in the Netherlands. It is the first book from her to be translated into English. And it’s a very good one.

Battered Women Fight

The problem of spousal abuse has received some welcome publicity over the past couple of decades, but remains a huge problem for women caught in marriages to men who indulge in domestic abuse.

Believing that publicity can help those who are attempting to help these women, two women have written a new book which shows in sometimes shocking accounts how wives become the victims of outlandish attacks, and often have been denied help from law enforcement and the judicial system.

Sisters in Pain: Battered Women Fight Back (University Press of Kentucky) tells the story (in sometimes shocking words) of ten women who went to prison because in desperation they killed their husbands. The women, aided by public opinion and hard work by authors L. Elisabeth Beattie and Mary Angela Shaughnessy, SCN.

Seven women’s stories are published, each in the words of these brave and courageous individuals. The book at times hurts to read, but its message needs to get out.

Author’s Letters Tell His Life

H.P. Lovecraft remains well known 63 years after his death because he wrote some of the most blood curdling tales ever put to paper. Anyone who had chills and goosebumps initiated by one of Lovecraft’s diabolical tales should

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