More mini-reviews - India, dystopia and turn-of-the-century Paris

The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga
I actually wanted to do a separate post about this book, but I read it back in August and left it so late and I've forgotten all the things I wanted to say. What stayed with me most, I think, is the feeling that I'm very lucky to be living where I'm living. I read this book - with its descriptions of the harsh realities of life in the slums and life as hired help for the rich - while on holiday in a lovely cottage in Wales, so I guess thoughts of gratitude were inevitable. The White Tiger is the story of Balram, a man born into a poor Indian family, but who isn't prepared to accept his fate, but instead dreams of escape. He eventually creates his own truth about what that means and about what successful people are prepared to do to get and keep success - and acts accordingly. A fantastic book, incredibly well-written, tackling interesting issues and exposing parts of the human soul that most of us don't like to think about... What are you prepared to do to get the life you want? The White Tiger won the Man Booker Prize in 2008.

Holes by Louis Sachar
This is what I read in one day when I was sick at home and trying to read A Discovery of Witches. I'm so glad I put that book down and picked up Holes instead, what a difference! Stanley Yelnats is accused of stealing a pair of shoes and is sent to Camp Green Lake as punishment. But Camp Green Lake is nothing like what it sounds - there is a warden who makes the boys dig holes all day, every day. No choice and no way out. Why? What's behind the digging? What's the truth about Stanley's family? Great book - it won the Newbery Medal in 1999 and the National Book Award in 1998, with good reason.

Gigi and The Cat by Colette
This is actually two books, which I didn't realise until I bought it! Gigi is on my 2011 list from Alex a.k.a. The Sleepless Reader - I didn't know the story and I enjoyed the turn-of-the-century Paris story of a young girl who everyone was trying to mould into a woman. I love how she thinks and I love how she turns out in the end. Charming. Strangely, since I'm a total musical fan, I've never seen the movie, but now I'll have to. I've never even heard of the second novella, The Cat, before, but I liked it even more than I liked Gigi! It's about a young couple where the man is more interested in his cat than in his young bride. And the young bride is jealous! I loved the slightly creepy feel to it, especially as the man became more and more like the cat.... Very Kafka-esque. Thanks Alex, for enriching my life with these classics!

Jellicoe Road by Melina Marchetta

It seems like so long ago that I read this! I do remember that I read it pretty much in one day, I didn't want to put it down...

This is the story of Taylor Markham who was abandoned when she was 11 and now, at 14, lives and studies at a boarding school where they woman who took her in works. It's the story of the conflict between Taylor's school's underground community, the Townies and the visiting Cadets. Taylor is drawn into the conflict and into relationships  she would normally avoid. She also finds a string of clues about a past tragedy that is somehow connected to the people around her.

I liked Jellicoe Road because it's different. Something about the author's tone makes the book unique, the atmosphere different from other YA books I've read. There is darkness there, and pain, but there is also this incredible feeling of realism, like I was watching real people in a world I didn't really understand. Nothing was simple and everything was a struggle. Isn't that what adolescence feels like?

Melina Marchetta is an Australian author, one of the very few I've ever read. Jellicoe Road won the Printz Award in 2009.

The Rights of the Reader by Daniel Pennac

I don't remember who in the blogosphere read this and blogged about it, but whoever it was, thank you, thank you, thank you. This little book is an absolute gem. The only thing I'm angry about it that I read it back in February and still haven't written anything about it... I felt so passionate about it as I was reading it and when I was done and now the passion has died down and it bothers me that this post will be flat.

Ah well.

So, The Rights of the Reader. It is an amazing, enlightening book (or essay) on why people read and how we can get more people to like reading, starting from when they're kids. Pennac is a teacher, passionate about reading, and he does his best to pass his enthusiasm along. Successfully.

There are so, so many things he talked about that I want to mention, but I think that would mean re-typing the whole book here. So, I'll just talk about a few things.

Firstly, I loved how he talked about the time when a child is just learning to read. He (or she) loves when mommy and daddy read to him, he loves stories, he loves the magic. He also loves the magic of learning to read, the magic of words appearing on a page and meaning something that is beautiful. (Daniel Pennac describes these first moments of recognising words in an amazing, beautiful way, I could never do it justice here.) And then the child gets more comfortable reading on his own and his parents just leave him to it, happy that they have an extra ten minutes in the evening to do something of their own. But the child is still struggling and because that support, that reading companion is gone, some of the magic dies too. And some kids just never recover from this disappointment of reading and grow up to be adults who don't have time for books.

Then, Pennac talks about how we from the beginning distort the experience of reading by giving it inappropriate labels. Surely you're not meant to enjoy whatever you are assigned to read in school if adults make a difference between 'reading for school' and 'reading for pleasure'. Surely TV is a much more enjoyable pastime if punishment consists of 'no tv' and you're forced to sit quietly and do something boring, like read a book. This really struck a chord with me, perhaps because I am desperate to get Shane to like books.

The actual rights of the reader that Pennac talks about it are so thought-provoking. Like the right to skip over passages that don't speak to you. Isn't it better to enjoy parts of War and Peace than to not read it at all? Or the right to be read to out loud, even as an adult. For some people, this really turns reading into an incredible experience.

This is now getting pretty long, so I'll stop,  but I strongly urge everyone who loves reading and who wants to encourage kids and teens to read more to get Pennac's book. It's a real treat.

And a last note - Daniel Pennac is a Frenchman and the book is written in his native French. It is translated into English by Sarah Hamp Adams.

The Piano Teacher by Janice.Y.K. Lee

Beautiful. I really enjoyed this book. It was the first regular novel I've read in a while, and I was totally lost in the story. I liked the writing, the characters, the storyline, pretty much everything.

The Piano Teacher takes place in Hong Kong, going back and forth between the Second World War and the Japanese occupation and the 1950s and British rule. The part set during the war tells the story of Will, a young Brit who ends up in Hong Kong right before war erupts. There he meets Trudy, a Eurasian beauty with a dynamite character and a survival instinct. Their story is one of wartime reality that I hope neither I nor my children ever have to experience.

The part set in the 1950s is about Claire, an English woman who follows her husband to Hong Kong and who ends up finding herself there. She meets Will too and becomes parts of the post-war relationships and vendettas that form in the community there.

I think part of the reason I liked this book so much is that I've never read anything set in Hong Kong and certainly didn't know anything about what happened there during the war. I found that side of it fascinating, the Japanese occupation and the Westerners living in Hong Kong during that time simply never entered my thoughts before. There is so much fascinating history there.

But aside from that, I thought that the author did a great job describing the realities of war - how some people change and how some just show their true colors. The fact that we're all the same no matter what time period we belong to is so apparent, it seems so simple.

My edition had a short interview with the author at the end and I found that really interesting. Lee is Korean but grew up in Hong Kong so she has a different perspective on the place. My favorite part of the interview was when she said that the book took her 5 years to write and by the time it was finished she had 4 kids! How you can write something so good with 4 kids in the house is beyond me. I'm impressed! :-)

Challenges: Orbis Terrarum, 2010 Countdown Challenge, What's in a Name 3

Faceless Killers by Henning Mankell

A Swedish crime novel, recommended to me by my friend Pierluigi after I complained about not liking The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson very much... He reads a lot of Scandinavian crime novels and assured me that Larsson wasn't the best writer around. I'm grateful for the tip and the opportunity to read Faceless Killers, I would never had picked it up if it wasn't for him!

Faceless Killers is the first book in the Kurt Wallander detective series. This particular story is about a violent crime and racial hatred - very interesting in the way that the story is put together, including comments on in how far the police can actually help a situation. The crime/detective part was great, I liked Wallander and I liked the way the case was solved. I look forward to reading more of Mankell's books!

A short post this time, I'm trying to catch up on reviews!

Like Water for Chocolate

Beautiful book. I'm a big fan of Latino writers anyway, since many include everyday magic in their stories, and Laura Esquivel is no exception. I understand that there is a film version of Tita and Pedro's story, I wonder how such a book can be translated into film... has anyone seen it?

A quote from the San Francisco Chronicle on the back cover of my edition calls Like Water for Chocolate "A tall-tale, fairy-tale, soap-opera romance, Mexican cookbook and home remedy handbook all rolled into one". I have to say that there is no disagreeing with this... the story of Tita and Pedro's romance is so out-of-this-world that all those terms really do apply!

I don't want to say much about the plot, it is a short book and I don't want to spoil it for you. But I will share a favorite passage:

"My grandmother had a very interesting theory; she said that each of us is born with a box of matches inside us but we can't strike them all by ourselves; just as in the experiment, we need oxygen and a candle to help. In this case, the oxygen, for example, would come from the breath of the person you love; the candle could be any kind of food, music, caress, word or sound that engenders the explosion that lights one of the matches."

Isn't that a nice way of phrasing things? This sort of mood pervades the entire story, which aside from the regular action has things like beans that won't cook because people have been arguing - you have to sing to them so that they're happy again and then they'll cook properly.

The phrase 'like water for chocolate' is used only once in the story and means 'on the verge of boiling over'... there are so many ways to interpret that!

As I said, this is a beautiful book, definitely worth reading. The food/cooking aspect reminds me of Joanne Harris and of Alice Hoffman and also of Sarah Addison Allen so if you like any of those authors, give this great Mexican writer a try!

Challenges: 1% Well-Read, 999 Challenge, Celebrate the Author

Let the Right One In

I can't remember who recommended John Ajvide Lindqvist's Let the Right One In to me, but it was certainly one of you, someone in the blogosphere who shares their thoughts on books with the rest of us. In any case, thanks whoever you were, as I probably would not have picked this up otherwise. There are so many vampire stories these days that you really need a personal recommendation, I think... This Swedish take on vampire stories is great.

Let the Right One In is the story of Oskar, a twelve-year-old boy with a life that I'm sure is not out of the ordinary. He lives with his mother in a mediocre apartment building, his alcoholic father unable to break his habit long enough to form a proper relationship with him. He is badly bullied at school and becomes obssessed with stories of murderers, as they inspire scenes of revenge in his mind. He is a pretty regular bored kid.

Until he meets Eli, a 200-year-old vampire who looks like a girl about his age. They strike up a friendship and pretty much start to love each other. You can imagine that this does not have positive consequences, life becomes even more complicated for young Oskar.

Their relationship grows amid mysterious ritual murders, unexplained events and the tedium of the dreary housing estate they live on. The story never stagnates, even though I suppose it's not that eleborate, as stories go.

The characters, however, shine. The author has a way of making fictional people come to life and he gives personal information on even the most secondary of characters. Really, the richness of the people living in this story makes the book worth reading.

Challenges: R.I.P. IV, Genre Challenge, 999 Challenge, 2010 Countdown Challenge

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

I still can't believe how disappointed I was with this book. I took it on holiday with me because so many people thought it was the perfect read for sitting by the pool - and I was bored! Seriously bored!

The story centers around journalist Mikael and security expert Lisabeth trying to solve the mystery of a disappearance. The other, parallel, plotline concerns business/finance journalism and chasing a story about a crook in the business world. That plotline bored me to bits, I must say.

The action was only vaguely interesting, the writing didn't flow, I kept hoping it would get better but it never did. I found the style simplistic too. It seems that this book was most definitely not for me - am I the only one in the world who didn't like it?? And I so wanted to read something exciting and gripping!!! :-(

Challenges: 1st in a series, 999 Challenge, Orbis Terrarum, Suspense and Thriller Challenge

A Thousand Splendid Suns

I literally just finished reading this and had an urge to write about it before my emotions died down. The book has been sitting on my shelf for years, as I couldn't imagine it being as good as Khaled Hosseini's first one, The Kite Runner. I'm happy to report that A Thousand Splendid Suns is just as good, if not better!

The two main female characters are beautiful. I loved Mariam and Laila from the first pages of reading about them and continued to do so until the end. Their strength in the face of unimaginable hardship was amazing, especially so since I imagine that they represent a whole generation of women. We, living in countries where there is peace and equality, don't know how lucky we are. I admit that I take so very much for granted, all my freedoms included. I have nothing but admiration for the women who lived through Afghanistan's troubled years and the Taliban's rule. I cannot imagine going through it myself.

A Thousand Splendid Suns gives us a glimpse into the history of what seems to be a beautiful country (I've never been) and one which definitely has a rich culture and past. This history is shown to us through regular human beings in everyday situations. There can't be anything that we can identify with more.

If it wasn't for authors like Khaled Hosseini, we would never have the chance to experience Afghanistan and to be made aware of what the news we watch on tv means to the people there, how it affects them. I for one feel richer having read A Thousand Splendid Suns and am extremely grateful to the author for affecting my life in this way.

Challenges: 2nds Challenge, 999 Challenge, Every Month is a Holiday, Orbis Terrarum, Whitcoulls Challenge

Suite Francaise

Suite Francaise is an account of France during the Second World War, written by Irene Nemirovsky. It is truly incredible that we even have the opportunity to read this book. Irene Nemirovsky was of Jewish descent and was deported to Auschwitz in 1942. She died there a couple of months after her arrival. Her husband spent several months trying to locate her and get her back, not understanding what deportation meant in the Nazi-occupied world. He drew too much attention to himself and was also deported to and died in Auschwitz, not long after his wife. Their two daughters were hidden by friends of the family for the remainder of the war - they were often moved from place to place and it is very fortunate for use that they took their mother's manuscripts with them every time, as something to remember their mother by.

We should be thankful, as Suite Francaise is a beautiful book. Nemirovsky completed two parts of the book, the rest only exists as notes and outlines. The first part is about Parisians fleeing the city before the Nazi invasion. The second is about a small French village under German occupation.

In both, the characters are vivid and real. They are central, as the book is definitely about the human side of war. About the rich trying to save their porcelain rather than helping other people, about trying to survive any way you can, about normal human feelings of loss and anger and love.

In the second part especially, this human aspect shines through as the French people in a small village try to live side-by-side with the Germans who are occupying the area. The German soldiers live in their houses and are part of their everyday life. They are not mean or horrible, they are just soldiers following orders. Some of them are liekable. Some of them are possible to fall in love with. I thought these issues were very interestingly portrayed, very thought-provoking.

This wasn't a page-turner and I found some sections difficult to get through. But it's a book worth reading because it shows part of history and it does so in a beautiful and human way.

Challenges: 1% Well-Read Challenge, 999 Challenge, A-Z Challenge, Banned Book Challenge, Countdown Challenge, Jewish Literature, Orbis Terrarum, War through the Generations

The Metamorphosis

I'm sure I read Kafka's The Metamorphosis at school, but I couldn't remember much, so when I noticed it on DailyLit I subscribed.

It's the story of Gregor, a man who one day wakes up to find that he is a giant insect. His first thoughts about this situation relate to work and not being able to show up on time. He works for some very strict people and although he hates it, he does it so that he can support his family who have financial problems. He loses his job quickly of course and the family have to fend for themselves. They take care of Gregor to a certain basic extent - they clean his room and bring him food - but they are disgusted by him and wish he were gone. When he does go, they are relieved that their hardship is over.

There is alot of analysis of this story on the internet, but apprently scholars can't agree on what it really means. I guess what struck me was that Gregor sacrificed his life for his family, to be able to support them, and they didn't really appreciate it. I know that when I'm in situations that seem very hard, I end up wishing I could just give up, even if logically I know I can't. I tend to wish that something would happen to change the situation, something I can't even think of.This is what happened to Gregor, I think. Something happened to get him out of the unsatisfying situation he was in and he could just give up.

I also though a lot about being different and alienated while I was reading this. OK granted, turning into a bug is an extreme example and I'm sure I wouldn't treat Gregor in the same way if I was there, but still... you have to wonder if his family would have taken care of him if he was unable to work for other reasons. He became something different and was no longer needed.

He must have been really lonely too, not to really mind turning into a bug. He didn't seem too concerned with his new state...

I guess the point of my rambling is that I don't really know what I'm talking about. :-) I enjoyed reading Kafka's novella and I can see how it touches on a whole variety of issues, but I don't really see the big picture. I feel better about this knowing that scholars haven't really figured it out either.

Kafka is an interesting person though, Czech but living under German-speaking rule in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and I'd like to read some of this other works.

Challenges: A-Z Challenge, 999 Challenge, Decades Challenge, Jewish Literature (Kafka was Jewish!), Orbis Terrarum, What an Animal

Night

I read Elie Wiesel's Night in one sitting yesterday evening. Although I did take one break because I had to cry. Night is the author's memoir of his childhood in Auschwitz and other camps. I'm not going to say much about the plot because I think that description says it all really. I'm lucky I could read it from the comfort of my own living room, after a nice dinner and while sipping some good red wine. Very lucky indeed.

One of the things that struck me is that even in times of war human beings don't really entertain then thought that something bad could happen to them. The Jews in the village where the author lived had heard rumors about the atrocities going on in the camps and about persecution everywhere. They even had actual evidence because of one their own had been taken away and had escaped and come back to warn everyone. And yet they still believed that the war would end just in time or that the Germans would never get that far or that they would somehow be more merciful in their village. Amazing thing, the human mind.

It also struck me that in the camps, in the end nothing mattered but survival. Watching others die didn't always have the effect that we would think it would. It's incredible what kinds of circumstances we can get used to, what becomes normal. I hope that I would be as strong in such situations, even though I find that hard to believe.

If books like this one are written, they deserve to be read. Night is the first in a trilogy - has anyone read the other two books, Dawn and Day?

Challenges: A-Z Challenge, 999 Challenge, Bang Bang Book Challenge, In Their Shoes, Jewish Literature Challenge, Lost in Translation, War Through the Generations, What's in a Name?

Out

I'm a few days too late to count Natsuo Kirino's Out for the Japanese Literature Challenge, which means that I didn't finish that one. Oh well, I have so much life stuff going on that I don't get as much reading done as I'd like. More on that some other time.

What a book! I don't usually read crime novels so this was way out of my comfort zone, but I really enjoyed it. I do love Japanese literature though so maybe that was part of it. It was suspenseful and gruesome at times, but it also had odd moments of clarity about human beings.

The story is basically about a group of women who work the night shift at a factory - they're all different but they all have difficult things they have to deal with and escape from. Then, one of them kills her husband. The others decide to help their friend get rid of the body and this unleashes a whole chain of events and gets a whole string of people involved. Mostly people you'd want to stay away from.

It's also a psychological study of the darkness in human beings. How far into the dark would you go? What would be capable of pushing you there? And what happens when you cross that moral line for the first time? I'm not sure I like the answers... I mean I know that we all have a dark side, but I also hope that it never comes to the surface in most of us. Well, in all of us actually, but that's wishful thinking.

The book read like a thriller - parts were even like watching a thriller. My brain kept saying 'no, don't go there, don't do it, nooooo' during some passages. That's got to be a sign of good writing!

There is one thing that I really didn't like at the end, but I don't want to spoil the book for anyone. Let's just say that I'd hope that hatred is easier to hang on to and that giving in to the dark side isn't that obvious.

I'd definitely recommend this one, whether you like Japanese literature or quality crime writing. Apparently Natsuo Kirino won a prize for another of her books, Soft Cheeks. I now see that it hasn't been translated into English (hopefully yet), but others have. More to choose from, yay!

Challenges: 999 Challenge, A-Z Challenge, Countdown Challenge, Genre Challenge, Lost in Translation, Naming Conventions, New Authors, Suspense and Thriller Challenge, Well-Seasoned Reader

The Good Women of China

January 26 was the start of the Chinese New Year, also known as Lunar New Year because it's start is linked to the moon. I thought this would be a perfect choice for the January holiday for the Every Month is a Holiday challenge.

The book I read was Xinran's The Good Women of China. Now, I would NEVER have heard of Xinran if it's hadn't been for Joy and the A-Z Challenge that she hosted last year. X authors are hard to find! I decided to do this challenge again this year (this time hosted by ...) and so was in a fix once more. I am so incredibly glad that I picked up Xinran's book when I saw it in a secondhand bookstore. I really think that my life is richer because I read this one.

The Good Women of China is non-fiction. Xinran is a Chinese journalist who had a radio show about Chinese women and their lives. Women could call in or leave messages and had the opportunity to tell their stories. Xinran gathered these stories and her experiences getting them and meeting the women involved and put it all in a book.

What she created is very powerful. Women in China had to live through so much - not only the traditional society aspect of things but also the political side of things. Women were married off by either their parents or by the revolution. They were used, abused and thrown out. They lost their children, they lost the loves of their lives, they ended up alone or with husbands they didn't care for. Survival was the main goal and everything else got buried in the process.

But these women's stories show that some things can't be buried, not really. The emotions in this book are so powerful that I couldn't tear myself away from the stories. Who knew that a non-fiction book about women in China could be such a page turner?

I think that this one sentence sums up how the Cultural Revolution affected people:

"Humanity and wisdom were banished to places which did not know there was anywhere in this world where women could say 'no' and men could read newspapers."

Reading this made me sad for the people of China and very interested in reading more about their country, including about the Cultural Revolution. If you've read anything interesting on these subjects, please let me know!

Challenges: 999 Challenge, A-Z Challenge, Countdown Challenge, Dewey Decimal System Challenge, Every Month is a Holiday, New Authors, Well-Seasoned Reader, World Citizen Challenge