Seven Days of Possibilities

Rating:
Summary: MASTER THE POSSIBILITIES...
Review:
This is an exceptionally well-written work of non-fiction. The author, a noted columnist and reporter for the New York Times, distinguishes herself further with this book, which is her first. Writing with all the assurance and polish of a first class investigative reporter, the author, having covered education for five years for the New York Times, is in her element with the subject matter of this book.

The book focuses on Johanna Grussner, a young Finnish woman, whose love for music took her from her native Aland Islands, an archipelago in the Baltic Sea located between the coasts of Finland and Sweden, to the United States, ultimately landing her in New York City. While furthering her quest to become a professional jazz singer, happenstance found her working as a music teacher in the Bronx at P.S. 86. There, in an inner city school that was run like a tight ship by its principal, a man who cared deeply for the school in his own rigid, uncompromising way, she was to defy all odds and make an impact that many will remember for years to come.

Ms. Grussner would demonstrate to all what a determined, though idealistic, person can do to bring joy into the lives of children who may have their options for such limited by their own personal circumstances, as well as by a society that looks to pigeonhole students as if one size does, indeed, fit all. The author grounds Ms. Grussner's efforts to form a school choir in the context of the political and racial milieu of the New York City public school system, replete with all the political chicanery and requisite skullduggery involved in the running of a school in such an environment.

The author's narrative is seamless and unsentimental, letting the strength of the story itself soar, rewarding the reader with a richness of detail about the school and those involved in its day to day activities. She provides the reader with three dimensional portraits of those who contributed to the seven days of possibilities, whereby twenty-four of Ms. Grussner's most musically gifted students traveled with her to her hometown in order to perform in a gospel concert. There, they discover that music is a universal language, and the week spent in the Aland Islands would be one that would long linger in their collective memories.

This is truly an excellent book, beautifully written and immensely readable. It is a book that will keep the reader turning its pages until the very last one is turned. Bravo!



Rating:
Summary: beautiful depictions of children
Review: As a mom, I was fascinated by the descriptions of children in this book. The book goes deep into the lives of working-class kids, their struggles to be recognized, and their parents' hopes for them. The author brought real sensitivity and insight to these stories. Terrific writing, studded with little jewels of details and observations. The part of the book that takes place in Finland was like taking a vacation to a strange wonderful place. And the ending was a real page-turner. A highly original book.

Rating:
Summary: A Pleasurable Surprise
Review: I approached this book with some trepedation, worried that it might be just another pat, feel-good story. What a surprise and pleasure to find myself immersed in an enaging, memorable read, filled with characters who came alive and stayed with me. It was also a carefully wraught cautionary tale of all that's not right (and a bit that is) in inner-city public schools. I've since recommended it to friends and colleagues, all of whom have shared my enthusiasm.

Rating:
Summary: From Finland's insularity to New York's multi-kulti chaos
Review: I read this book with great interest after having lived eight months myself in Finland back in the mid-1980's. My own upbringing in San Francisco in the 60's/70's was only in the Catholic school system, which had a hodgepodge of first-generation European kids, mostly Irish, Italian, some French and Polish, but all with strong ethnic identities at home.

In Finland, poverty has haunted the people's memories for generations, going hundreds of years back under Swedish and Russian rule. The recent prosperity of the post-war years is a novelty for most, unless they were born in the 1970's and beyond. In this story, a girl from above-average priviledged rank in Aland, a Swedish-speaking (therefore, snobbier than the rest of Finland) island. Johanna grows up thinking herself better than others, and is heavily insulated from the rigors of life outside Aland, or outside Finland, good God. I disagree with Johanna's statement, through the journalist/narrator's words, that the Finns have a long-standing love of American black-sung blues. The Finns are much more lovers of classical music, their own mournful melodies and folk songs, and for dancing, there's always been the Finnish tango, waltz and polka, surplanted in the 50's by American rock. American Negro music was an underground taste, as it was in Russia, Germany, etc., due to its unsavory lyrics and lewd allusions. Young people in rebellion and city people in degenerate lives gravitated to it. The bulk of the Finnish population would have subconsciously spurned it, or found it an odd, interesting subculture from that big, fat, rich, white country over there, that USA, that land of immigration where Finnish ancestors fled from their poverty.

If Johanna set out to become a jazz blues singer, she was already setting herself apart from the bulk of the population. A girl of her standing would normally attend a nursing, teaching or medical school, and strive for status in the community through the standard channels of higher education. Diplomas and degrees mean a very, very, very great deal in Scandanavia. Even those graduates who don't find work commensurate with their diplomas, who in fact are unemployed for years, are held in high regard, regardless! In AMerica, such lazing about would indeed bring derision, all the more when the person had education.

I met many such young women in Finland, for they would gravitate naturally to me, a foreigner from wild and crazy San Francisco. Their fantasies about a free and easy life, far from the rigors of old-fashioned Finnish values and endless judgments, would run riot in their conversations with me. They would juggle anything, take any parental or governmental help they could, to spend years abroad away from the stifling, highly academic expectations of their families and communities. Those with money, such as Johanna with generous, tolerant and well-off parents, found their way to places like NYC to study music, even such socially approbrated sytles such as jazz singing. Those from her island would certainly think she is going through a young-years fling with foreign ideas, but that she would certainly come back when the economic crunch hit her after school years.

So sure enough, here is the book about her economic struggles. If anything this story could be said to be, from Johanna's pooint of view, it was 1. to escape Aland and Finnish restrictions; and 2. to earn enough abroad to avoid going home. Her signing up for teaching a bunch of kids from the lower classes was just a fling, a slumming. She knew her parents would be able to take her back in a flash and pay all her medical bills. She was subsisting on that teacher's salary, knowing well she was no more fit to survive in the NYC than these minorities stuck in the Bronx on low wages.

In Finland, with a quiet village school, and a strict, homogenous school culture, the children naturally are obedient and diligent. They are not in need of constant berating, since the whole of Scandanavia raises their children to be quiet, self-effacing, and considerate of others. Meanwhile, back in the Bronx, no matter what infusion of money, teachers, materials and high-minded dreams like Johanna, no matter how many free lunches, new playgrounds, sports uniforms or new buildings, the children themselves cannot succeed because their parents come from anti-intellectual cultures. Their parents value pleasure in the moment, workaday jobs immediately after high school graduation. They're not interested in their children's long-pleasure-deferring climb through university and professional schools. Especially girls are expected to fall straight into sex-related disasters, namely pregnancy, possibly prostitution. These cultures are more primitive and much more lenient. AS the narrator insists, the parents love their children and would give them anything in their power to help them.

However, what do the Bronx Latino and Black parents want to give their children? Discipline, academics and a strong respect for academics and career? Or do they want to give them pleasures of the moment, new clothes, and rollercoaster-type thrills?

There is a reason that Scandanavian children, regardless of relative income status, do well in the world. They were for generations poor, but very hard-working, serious-minded, religious in a Protestant direction, and respectful of others. They believe in SISU, the Finnish word meaning "endurance", not buckling in to obstacles. A Finn is not raised to think that, because his job pays low wages when he is young, that he should turn to drug dealing so he can get the car, the chicks and other thrills unavailable to low income people. Have a look around the USA: do Scandanavian children of last generation fall into such despicable lifestyles? NO, the parents would never allow it, even if they can only afford one pair of shoes for the kid.

If anything this book will illustrate to a reader, it is the great contrast in culture between Finland and the lower-class New Yorkers from the black and Latino cultures. The actual income is not the point, so much as the total disregard for academics and self-control that these cultures breed in children.

IT may be a curse to be born black in America, as it was a curse to be a Finn under the Swedes for generations, but the amount of violence and self-destruction amongst the blacks is clearly not just the doing of others in the USA, themselves immigrants from Europe.

Johanna Grussner, semi-idealistic Finnish singer, knew well that it is not a question what she brings from her Protestant and strict country. If the children themselves go home each night to a lowbrow, victimologized home culture (let's not even bring up the lack of fathers in the houses, since that's just part of the self-desctructive black and Latin culture), no amount of exposure to higher values and self-discipline for a few hours of school time will help them.

Amusing book!!! I would say that Johanna's quest to inject black American values into her home country through its "poor ol' me" spirituals may backfire if her own children think of themselves as victims in the next generation. When they refuse to study, rebel, get pregnant, take drugs and kill each other, because they think that it is the only way to "deal with life", God help Scandanavia, contaminated in such a way.

Rating:
Summary: A Pleasurable Surprise
Review: In this beautifully written and very moving book, Ms. Hartocollis not only tells the story of a young woman from Finland who, through her character, talent, and personality affected many children--and others--in a short time; she also, with a talent that many novelists would envy, captures inexorable human conflicts that, despite good instincts, can poison even the closest relationships. Anyone who cares about education, anyone who wants to be a teacher, and most of all, anyone who's looking for a great story about the most interesting people in the world--real people--should not miss this book.

Rating:
Summary: An Incredible Story--and much more
Review: In this beautifully written and very moving book, Ms. Hartocollis not only tells the story of a young woman from Finland who, through her character, talent, and personality affected many children--and others--in a short time; she also, with a talent that many novelists would envy, captures inexorable human conflicts that, despite good instincts, can poison even the closest relationships. Anyone who cares about education, anyone who wants to be a teacher, and most of all, anyone who's looking for a great story about the most interesting people in the world--real people--should not miss this book.

Rating:
Summary: beautiful depictions of children
Review: This book tries to do a lot of things: Tell a story about a struggling musician from Finland and her effort to bring culture to an inner city school; Demonstrate the transformational power of music on children; Explore
how the stultifying bureaucracy of a giant school system can thwart teacher creativity. Certainly, these are worthwhile themes. Unfortunately, the author often fails to develop these themes in credible or sensitive ways. The result is a mishmash of thinly developed characters and an uneven storyline.
Indeed, the story itself might be the book's fatal flaw. At its core, it's about a musician from Finland who teaches at P.S. 86 in the Bronx for four years. During her short career, she forms a chorus and takes the students to
her native Finland. The result is predictable: Students and teachers are amazed at Finland's nice, quiet school. Tough Bronx boy dances with cute Fin girl. Shy student overcomes stage fright and brings down the house during the field trip's
concert.
Is that enough raw material for a book? It seems like the author isn't sure herself, as she frequently veers away from the basic story and delves into the lives of the school's teachers, students and benefactors. While some characters deserve the ink, such as the P.S. 86 teacher from Scarsdale who brought the Fin teacher, Johanna, to the school. Others characters, such as the Scarsdale teacher's friend, are tangential at best to the overall story. But the author goes into their lives with equal vigor. The result is distracting. Overall, you get the feeling that the author is trying to milk a
dry cow.
The author also lacks a credible narrative voice. In describing the book's students and teachers, she seems to take pains to describe them in both positive and negative ways, whether the positive attribute or negative attribute is relevant or not. This is a common affliction among daily newspaper writers - as the author is in this case - who find it necessary to balance positive and negative statements to create an aura of objectivity and fairness. A character in a book, however, deserves a more layered treatment.
One example in "Seven Days" is the principal of P.S. 86. The author tries to turn him into a villain of sorts by describing him a Napoleonic bureaucrat. When he finds out Johanna is tutoring another student's child, he grills her until she starts crying. Meanwhile, the author also describes how the principal goes out of his way to make the trip to Finland a reality. In the hands of a more skillful writer, these contradictions might add depth to a character. However, in this book the contradictions tend to raise questions about the author's understanding of the character.
More disturbing is the author's tendency to insert her own thoughts and questions into the narrative. While some authors may do this effectively because of their own experience or knowledge, other writers use it to fill holes - holes created by inadequate research or unwilling subjects. In "Seven Degrees," the author's suppositions about characters' thoughts or motivations within the narrative tend to be more jarring than revealing.