Reviews

• The best kind of escape

  The Califfs of Baghdad, Georgia, can come to my house, any time. The characters seemed so real that I found myself wondering what they were doing when I wasn't reading the book. To me, that's the sign of a truly well-written novel, one that transports me away from my own circumstances, my worries or my day-to-day details. I loved being in Threestep, Georgia for their impossibly hot, sweaty days instead of the freezing cold blizzards of my reality. The story-within-a-story-within-a-story-within-a-story mechanism was amazing! Just when I thought I couldn't get any deeper into the story, there would be another layer of connections and detail. Mary Helen Stefraniak connects the two very different worlds -- small town Georgia circa 1938 and ancient Baghdad -- through personalities and fate. It was intriguing, intricate and beautifully accomplished. I do have a bit of advice for anyone just beginning to read the book: PAY ATTENTION at the beginning. The details really matter as you go along, just like in The Turk and My Mother. I laughed out loud throughout the book but it is also very touching. Sections of the book I read as fast as I could because I could hardly wait to see what was going to happen, and then I would have to back-track because I couldn't believe what had actually just happened! WHEN will it come out in paperback? My Book Group has a policy of only reading paperbacks .... and this will be a great discussion book -- there is so much in this book to discuss. And remember. And treasure.

• good story but ran on too long

  Loved this book till I didnt- It needed to wind up about 75 pages before it did.. I lost me and annoyed me that it was not over

• A brilliant novel, an American mythology

  If you missed Mary Helen Stefaniak’s 2011 novel, The Cailiffs of Baghdad, Georgia, this is the year you should discover this remarkable work, begun, as the author says, at a time when the city of Baghdad was being bombed and at a point that she wished to explore how to make sense of such violence from a view closer to home. Stefaniak’s second novel shares all of the brilliance of her first, The Turk and My Mother, with writing that is deeply pleasing, meticulous and rich, telling a story of unexpected historical layers and characters whose voices are so finely tuned that we grieve their loss at the book’s end. Much like Louise Erdrich, Stefaniak creates a world and populates it with characters who are archetypal or mythological yet remain singular persons. As their voices remind us of the American story in all of its wonder and horror, the families and interlopers in Baghdad, Georgia are a thrill to meet and watch unfold on their own. Even those who in a lesser book would simply be the readily labeled one-dimensional bigot, or jackass, or town buffoon—or hero or sacrificial lamb—and even when we love, dislike, or even hate them, each demands we take them and their needs and wants and loves seriously, and their voices dictate how importantly we invest in their salvation or comeuppance. Happily, comeuppance is not even close to the heart of this book, although at the beginning it may seem to be. The narrator, young Gladys (named because her parents were so “glad” to have her sound and well after other difficult births, placing the family in the American tradition of naming children Increase, Vanity, and Makepeace), is the narrator of most of the book. At times she sees way more than she should and certainly more than she understands. She is naïve, but we readers are not. Her adored White teacher, Grace Spivey, represents the “graced” view that settler and immigrant Americans have historically had of themselves, and the freedom that such grace ought to mean. She is Lady Liberty. But Grace’s typically American self-assurance borders on arrogance. She is one of the “privileged.” She judges before she has really seen (and thereby sets violence in motion). She loves and takes affection without allowing herself to be invaded or known. Though she does true good work that benefits the town, she sets the terms of the benefit, indoctrinating as she educates, welcoming where she is worshipped, and dismissing often where she ought to pay attention. Though she has real insight into the nature of local injustices, she seems not even to know how take the consequences when she goes too far in trying to right them. It is no coincidence that the main Black character, Theo, is at first grateful for but then ultimately resents and is enraged by her attempts to “integrate” him into full acceptance by the town. He sees that she does not think of herself as “one of us” (as Gladys is horrified to discover) but an outsider above the rules and feelings of the town. He recognizes that she insists he feel the same, but on her terms. Yet when he, as the result of Grace’s interference, is badly injured, Gladys reminds us that not only was Theo not the god that Grace tried to make him, he wasn’t even a saint, but a good man whose destiny was interfered with because his integrity was ignored. Beloved yet taken for granted, Theo represents the “wake” of enlightened America, those people still being damaged or ruined by intention or misadventure because they are not seen or accepted as “one of us.” If there is a platitude to be found in that on-going tragedy, this reviewer can’t see it. The Cailiffs of Baghdad, Georgia is as much an American mythology as it is a tale for our time, a tour de force on every level. It is hard to use the word “liberal” today, but Professor Stefaniak writes with a real liberality of mind. If as she claims, everything she has written has been both tribute to and argument with that other great American Georgia writer, Flannery O’Connor, it is also difficult to see how Miss O’Connor would find much to mess with. (One note: I have consistently called this work “American,” by which I mean European and African American. Stefaniak handles the difference and sameness of these two with real sensitivity, but she also takes an amazing turn in the last third of the book, moving from Gladys’s narrative to one of the “real” caliphs, who I believe may represent not only the “oriental” but to some respects Native Indians. The reasons for that section and its complexity are more than can be addressed here and deserve a review of their own.)

• Didn't capture me.

  I read a good deal of this book but it just didn't interest me enough to keep going. I can't say why for sure??

• Far Fetched and Bizarre

  Fun to read, however I found the book not very believable. It has been a while since I read the book and I don't remember a lot of details. I don't know if I would have chosen it had it not been a book club selection.

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