Krik? Krak!

by Edwidge Danticat

The youthful face on the cover and the title had misled me to expect a light, young adult read. This book is, however, a serious and excellent collection of short stories about life in Haiti and Haitians in America, and is in fact a finalist for the National Book Award.

In Haitian tradition, a story teller says “Krik!” to alert listeners that a story is about to be told. The audience responses with “Krak!”, to let the storyteller that they are giving her their attention in anticipation of a good tale. In this book, your anticipation will not be disappointed, for Danticat is a genius in capturing the spirit of her characters and creating beautiful imagery with little words. Powerful, memorable characters, often living an impoverished and at times tragic life, that stay with you after the story ends, dispite the little time you have come to know them. The woman who longs for a baby to hug, the woman who prositutes while her son sleeps, the immigrant mother who lives with her Americanized daughter, the man who goes on a raft, the girl who finally finds her name, the little boy who recites his speech in a play.

Often an anthology may have a few good stories, padded by mediocre ones, but this collection is excellent throughout. Higly recommended and likely to earn a spot on my best ten of the year list.

The Teahouse Fire

by Ellis Avery

“When I was nine, in the city now called Kyoto, I changed my fate. I walked into the shrine through the red arch and struck he bell. I bowed twice. I clapped twice. I whispered to the foreign goddess and bowed again. And then I heard the shouts and the fire. What I asked for? Any life but this one.”

Thus begin the story of Aurelie, a French American girl of nine in last 19th century. She was taken from her mother, against her will, to accompany her missionary uncle to Kyoto to “convert the barbarians”. When a fire broke out in the house she and her uncle stayed in, she ran away, and ended up in the garden of a Japanese tea master. She was taken in by Yukako, the tea master’s daughter, as partly a maid, partly a younger sister. They did not consider her a foreigner, as she did not have blue eyes and golden hair, but thought that she was just born a bit defected and retarded (as her language skills seeed seriously limited). (I guess if a child with Down’s syndrome can be called Mongol, such perception can go both ways…) As the two girls grew up, they witnessed the political changes in Japan: the birth of Tokyo as the new capital, the demise of power of the samurai clan, the influence of Western culture, the resulting nationalism… and with it, the realization that the art of tea had to adapt to the new world or die.

The beginning of the story strongly reminds me of Memoirs of a Geisha. Both are about a young girl being plucked from her normal childhood, to enter into a highly codified community of a Japanese traditional art as an outsider. For Aurelie, she was doubly an outsider, barely speaking the language and totally ignorant of the social rules and etiquettes. Thus, a perfect protagonist was created. As things were explained to her, they were explained to the readers, without feeling contrived.

Reading the book gives me the pleasure of understanding more about chado and recent history of Japan. I had attended a tea ceremony once and couldn’t say I enjoyed it, just found the whole thing too artificially formal, sitting painfully on my legs in a constrictive kimino, and a big show for just a cup of hardly palatable tea (the tea was made with grounded tea leaves froth to a foamy, bitter, dark green broth, served with a sweet that supposedly balances the bitterness but for me had the effect of making it more bitter.) I won’t rush for another cup of tea but at least I can see the reason why someone would love it, and appreciate better the thoughts and care that go into the art. Really a lot of thoughts and care. In one ceremony, the windows were closed off except for one, fitted with glass. The ceremony was timed such that the moon would sail into view at the moment the tea was prepared. When the guest arrived in a kimino that doesn’t go well with their decoration, the master had to rearrange the furniture, change the tea box, move the flowers… if they could repaint the room and change the carpet… they probably would too…

As a fiction, Memoirs is without doubt more accompanished. As Aurelie is more an observer in the background, she is often a reporter of events rather than the actress in the center stage. At times the pace feels too slow, the characters walking around the stage without much action and purpose, and some scenes and events are simply uninteresting. Definitely a bit of editing could make the read more pleasurable.

However, I was glad that I stay with the book, because the ending was worth it. In the last fifty pages or so, everything picks up speed, like a train leaving a station, building up, building up, and then with a blast and a loud horn, it runs at you with full force. I closed the book with tears in my eyes, and realize that if not for all the little clues and information the author painstakingly paved along the road, it would be impossible to fully understand Nao’s revenge, and to fully understand Yukako’s gift. All of a sudden I feel like asking Aurelie, don’t stop, don’t stop, tell me more…

Dear John

by Nicholas Sparks

It is a bit unusual for me to end up reading two of Spark’s books in a month as I am not particularly a big fan. I do however, like this a lot more than the other one I read, Nights in Rodanthe.

Nights in Rodanthe is about a magical weekend when two people fall in love. I found it somewhat unsatisfying: it’s so easy to have a perfect love for one weekend. Dear John starts similarly with two people falling in love, but it continues on to the not-quite-happily ever after, and we see the couple struggles as real life sets in. This gives me a much more authentic voice, and I feel so much more for John and Savannah as they try their best under the circumstances. Like most of Sparks’ books, the plot is rather predictable but the strength of the story lies not in any creative plots but in the telling of a very blood-and-flesh story that most readers can relate to.

The Shadow of the Wind

by Carlos Ruiz Zafón

A bit of cut and paste here because I just can’t say it so elegantly…

From The Washington Post

“I was raised among books,” writes Daniel Sempere, “making invisible friends in pages that seemed cast from dust and whose smell I carry on my hands to this day.” Young Daniel’s father runs a used bookstore in Barcelona; his mother died when he was 4, and he misses her desperately. One afternoon in 1945 the older Sempere informs his not quite 11-year-old son that he is taking him to The Cemetery of Forgotten Books. “You mustn’t tell anyone what you’re about to see today.” Daniel’s father tells him that “according to tradition, the first time someone visits this place, he must choose a book, whichever he wants, and adopt it, making sure that it will never disappear, that it will always stay alive.” Daniel chooses — or perhaps is chosen by — “The Shadow of the Wind,” by Julian Carax.

Daniel loses himself in the book — we are never told too much about its gothic-thriller plot — and soon asks for other works by Carax, who seems to have been a Spaniard living in Paris during the 1920s and ’30s. He learns that his works are virtually impossible to find. Rumor has it that over the past 10 years or so a dark figure with a limp has bought up every Carax available, and that libraries and private collections have had their Carax titles stolen. It’s hinted that all the copies — never plentiful to begin with — have been burnt and that the man with the limp goes by the name of Lain Coubert. Daniel knows this name. In “The Shadow of the Wind” it is the one used by the devil.

And so Daniel plunges deeper and deeper into the enigma of Julian Carax and his accursed books, and along the way risking the lives and happiness of all those he loves. It grows ever more apparent that much that has seemed random or mad or unlucky — the burning of Carax’s novels, sudden disappearances, the blighting of so many lives — may be part of a larger insidious plan, that there are wheels within wheels.

Suffice it to say that anyone who enjoys novels that are scary, erotic, touching, tragic and thrilling should rush right out to the nearest bookstore and pick up The Shadow of the Wind. Really, you should.

And now my little bit of thoughts:

“Scary, erotic, touching, tragic and thrilling”? Sure, but that doesn’t quite describe it. To me it’s one big love story. A love story that, striped to its basic, maybe a little too cliche, but after the author spins his magic around, and add in the layers of mystery, adventure, fantasy, humor, gothic horror… it is one great story that grips you and won’t let go long after the last page is read. To me, the story is mostly about love: the passionate love between two teenagers, the heroic love between friends, and the enduring love between father and son.

Honestly, it’s rather hard to write too much about it without giving away the plot. Suffice to say that it’s one of the best books I’ve read this year. Impossible to put down once I started.

A Thousand Splendid Sun

by Khaled Hosseini

I kept crying for a while after finishing the book.  A moving story indeed, especially towards the ending – well, it was well written from page 1, and continue to build up to a lovely ending.  A strong, solid work throughout and, unlike The Kite Runner, did not falter in the middle part. 

The title comes from a poem about Kabul writen by Saib-e-Tabrizi back in the seventeenth century:

“One could not count the moons that shimmer on her roofs,
or the thousand splendid suns that hide behind her walls.”

It’s this beauty that draws the city’s sons and daughters home, despite of the danger and the rubbles.  The story is about Mariam and Laila, two women who are wives to a brutal man.  Both of them harbor loss of their loved ones, and in a world where they seem to be lone survivors of their families who departed them in brutal manners,  they slowly they overcome their hostility and become like friends, like sisters, like mother and daughter.   Unlike the protagonist in Kite Runner, these women are strong, and they have hopes and dreams that they are not afraid to pursuit.

It is also chilling to see how much the political and social environment could change in such a short time.  When Leila was young, she was able to run around the neighborhood and visited her male friend.  Then she had to done a burqa, and could not step outside without a male family escort.  It reminds me of The Handmaid’s Tale — somehow, that story doesn’t seem so foreign, so fantastical after all.  If it could happen in Afghanistan, what guarantee it couldn’t happen elsewhere?

A Hive For The Honeybee

by Soinbhe Lally 

When I first lay hands on this book, I was impressed with the beautiful cover, and the artfully done illustrations heading each chapter. 

This book is quite different from other stories I’ve read.  In fact, I suppose I can call it my first novel about bees.  There is Alfred, a poetic drone who dreams about the virgin queen but gets tongue-tied when facing her; Mo, a radical drone who tries to negotiate peace talk with ants and wasps and introduce the idea of idling to the worker bees; Thora, the first worker bee to have a dream; Belle, always practical and efficient. 

In the beginning I wasn’t too into the story, though I find interesting for all the tidbits of information about the lives in, and the working of, a beehive.   Towards the end, however, I come to like the story, and feel very much for the characters Thora and Mo.  Their presence is much bigger than itsy little bees.

I love Alfred’s poems too:

Life is
A sip of honey
Yesterday

Year of Wonders

by Geraldine Brooks

Year of Wonders is a fictional work based on the real events of the 17th-century plague that was carried from London to a small Derbyshire village by a tainted piece of clothe.  As villagers begin, one by one, to die, the rest face a choice: do they flee the village in hope of outrunning the plague or do they stay?

I read this for The Reading Lounge’s  August bookclub.  In retrospect, my taste is rather morbid to have picked this book up in the library sale in the first place.  Who else would see “A Novel of the Plague” and say “interesting”?

Naturally, the book contains gruesome scenes of plague infection, render more gory by the author’s skill to create vivid imagery.   Some of the best scenes, however, are in the emotional landscapes of the various characters.   

The plague breaks out in the village, leaving 18 year old Anna not only a widow, but childless as well.  She works with Mr. Mompellion, the rector, and his wife Elinor, almost around the clock to tend to the sick , to comfort the dying, to help those living as sole survivor of a big family.   After the deaths of several families, I began to wonder where would the tale lead us, to carry the story on for many pages to come.  Several events transpire, showing us the best and worst of human nature.  The bacteria is not the only killer, as hatred, fear, greed and superstition kicks in.   After the death of Elinor (not a spoiler as this fact was made clear on page 2, the first part of the book written to date after the plague), events unfold that make me think, aha, I know that this is what will happen, I can smell that coming all along the way… when the crafty story takes a turn.  What would be the ending of a conventional historical novel spins off in a surprising new direction, making for an unexpected finale.   I am glad Brooks didn’t stop where most would have stopped, although the ending feels rather improbable.  An unreal conclusion to a hitherto very realistic historical tale.  

The decision for the village to remain quarantined is heroic; though on the other hand, as one of the characters points out, they really don’t an alternative to up and move.  The rich are the only one who can, and are they really evil for wanting to escape when they can?  It is ironic how the author wrote that, as they leave town, the villagers, instead of pelting them with rotten eggs and hissing, curtsy and take off their caps as signs of respect, just because they have been trained, since birth, to do so. 

The Coffee Trader

by David Liss

I read this for my bookclub.  I would admit that if this were just a contemprary “financial fiction” I would have aborted the reading long time ago. However, with the historical background of Portuguese Jews in the 17th century, this becomes a much more interesting read; and while some of us felt that the business maneuvour is above our heads, the historical backdrop keeps us going.  The plot itself is quite brilliant, one layer of deception upon another, and until the last page, you don’t quite know who has the upper hand.

According to the author notes, this book was originally about chocolate.  While I can image Miguel’s sister-in-law becomes more lustful after munching some cacao beans, I don’t suppose Miguel can claim his energy and clear-mindedness from something other than a cup of joe.

A big part of our discussion centers on whether Miguel is a good or bad guy.  In that aspect, the author excels in portraying all characters in a very three dimensional manner.  Each is full of life and stands out with his/her own personality.  The book is rich in all the senses: the smell of the city, the colorful clothes of the merchants, the buzzing of the exchange, and together with the characters, recreates a very solid world of 17th century Amsterdam.

My Year of Meats

by Ruth L. Ozeki

When documentarian Jane Takagi-Little finally lands a job producing My American Wife!, a Japanese television show straaing “authentic American housewives preparing beef dishes, she discovers some unsavory truths about love, fertility, and a hormone called DES.  Meanwhile, on the other side of the globe, Akiko Uerno, wife of the show’s adveristing executive, finds her life irreccably changed by the show.

I signed up for this Bookcrossing bookring because of my interest in the “unsavory truth about meat”, but this novel, the debute of Ruth Ozeki, delivered much more than I expected.   The characters are rich, authentic and colorful, the plot original and exciting.  It feels like a ride into unknown territory.  You don’t quite know what the next turn will lead you, but you are always in for a pleasant surprise as you move from one scenery into the next.  Ozeki is really defted with her pen; she captures a scene like a camera lens, so vividly that you can “see” it.  Especially outstanding is the scene about the young girl on wheelchair. 

It’s amazing how Ozeki can write a fiction on a subject as serious as agribusiness exploitation and managed it so entertainingly.  There was not a moment that the story felt preachy or dry, even though the message comes through loud and clear. 

The Devil and Miss Prym

by Paulo Coelho

Many years back I read The Alchemist and absolutely loved it.  In fact, I considered it one of the best, most inspiring books I’ve ever read,  its message simple yet beautiful and potent.

So naturally, I checked out Coelho’s other books.  I read The Valkyries, The Fifth Mountain, and The Pilgrimage, and was rather disppointed with all.   Not only could I not find the poignancy and beauty in these later works, I did not even consider them very good fiction at that. I don’t quite know why, but I continue to pick up his work…

After a few disappointment, this comes as a nice surprise.  I still won’t rate it as high as The Alchemist, but at least this one has an engaging storyline and characters.

 A man roams the land searching for the answer to a question that torments him since a tragedy: Are human beings, in essence, good or evil?  He comes to a remote, idyllic village, and strikes a deal with the villagers: if they could commit a murder, the gold will belong to them.  This throws the community into a turbulance of greed, cowardice and fear.

I enjoyed the story as it delves into the true nature of humankind.

Five Quarters of the Orange

by Joanne Harris 

Thanks again noumena12 at BookCrossing for passing on this excellent book.

The first page reads: “When my mother died she left the farm to my brother, Cassis, the fortune in the wine cellar to my sister, Reine-Claude, and to me, the youngers, her album and a two-liter jar containing a single black Perigord truffle.”  You sense immediately the undercurrent in the family. The narrator returns to her childhood village, but something sinister happened, many years ago, during the German occupation at WWII, that forced her family to flee their home, and forced her to return under an alias.

Frambroise returns, and remodels the old house into a successful cafe, making dishes based on her mother’s recipes.  (The lucious description of the dishes is almost a food porn.)  However, scribbled all over the album are lines of an enigmatic language, the key to unlocking what happened all those years ago.

Frambroise is not a likeable character.  (Simply have to quote this from Amazon: “named for a raspberry but with the disposition of, well, a lemon.”) Not likeable as a thin-lipped old widow, and definitely not as a spunky nine-year-old.  For she was diabolic, calculating, and cold hearted. However, the complex story itself is excellently told, in a dark tone that captivates me well after the book is closed.

 Definitely will check out her other works.

A Pale View of Hills

by Kazuo Ishiguro

SPOILER WARNING

It’s a really interesting book and I very much wish that my book club will read it, it would make for such interesting discussion. 

It’s a book that you read it, and you somewhat sense that something is not right.  At first you thought that the story doesn’t make sense, then “click”, it dawned on you, you go “aha”, and realize how brilliant a story this is.

I am still curious on some issues though -

1. Is Etsuko pregnant before moving to England? With Niki?
2. Where does the father-in-law fit in? Just a general old men?
3. So did Etsuko have an affair w Frank, then leaves Jiro her husband to go to England? Or the Jiro part was when she was pregnant with Keiko, and then after she left Jiro (or the bomb killed him) she was alone w Keiko when she met Frank? That is, the past Etsuko with Keiko in her belly befriending an Etsuko a few years down the road as a single mother?

Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister

by Gregory Maguire 

I have read plenty revised versions of Cinderalla, such as Ella Enchanted and Just Ella, most of them I enjoyed, but this is definitely an outstanding accomplishment.  It swifted the focus onto Iris, the stepsister who is plain in looks but kind, wise and observative, a young girl on the brim of maturity, painfully aware of her plain looks and insecure. It is striped of the fairy godmother and landed squarely into a specific spot in history and place.  It adds depth and reasoning to each character, so we can understand why each do and say the things one does, and how the story goes where it should go.

I have never been particularly interested in Wicked, despite the hype around it.  Now I look forward to what Mcguire’s next work is.   

The Silver Wolf

by Alice Borchardt

I picked this up at the library book sale because of the enthusiatic endorsement of Anne Rice, who happens to the suthor’s sister. 

Decadent Rome in the Dark Ages is mired in crumbling grandeur.  Into which comes Regeane, a beautiful young woman, bethroned to a mountain lord as a political move.  While she inherited her royal bloodline from her mother, from her murdered father she received the genes of werewolf.

While trying to escape the abuse of her uncle, she meets Antonius, a wise and gentle soul trapped within a body grotesquely disfigured by disease; Lucilla, the courtesan of the Pope himself; and Elfgifa, a Saxon captive whom Regeane rescued from slavery.  Regeane must fight for her life, her freedom, to live as she is, woman and wolf, partaking of both yet infinitely more than either.

This book certainly doesn’t feel like an Anne Rice book.  The writing style, with fragmented sentences, gets some taking used to, and ocassionally the woman/wolf narrative feels muddled.  I also feel that the character Lucilla should not be so full of emotional outbursts and hysteria, for who she is.  However, once into the story, I find it interesting enough to continue.

Passing Under Heaven

by Justin Hill

I started reading this while I was on The Tale of Murasaki, and it soon dawned on me the interesting parallels of the two stories.  Well, it was more than interesting parallel – the similarities are uncanny, so much so that I have to put aside Murasaki least I get the two mixed up.

Both tales are historical fiction about a female writer, heavily interlaced with original works written by the protagonists themselves. Murasaki is the creator of The Tale of Genji, one of the, if not the, best known classics from medieval Japan.  Yu Xuanji is among the most well-known female classical poets in China.

While the upbringing of the two girls are rather different – Murasaki grew up in a noble family, Lily was of humble birth - they share a strong streak of stubbornness and independence, not the meek and obedient ideal figure as expected of their tradition.  They both become concubines to prominent officials and at one point of their lives, lived in a monastery.

Interestingly, in Murasaki, Fuji mentioned the visit of a Chinese ambassador, while in Passing Under Heaven Lily went on the street of the Capital to view the passing by of a Japanese convey.   Both girls are also very much intrigued with the poem The Song of Everlasting Sorrow, about Yang Guifei and the King.

I did not realize, till well pass half the book, that Passing Under Heaven is a fictional biography of Yu Xuanji (she did not acquire the name Xuanji till rather late in her life). I could not say I know much of her, though I remember there was a porn movie about her – The Slut of the Tang Dynasty (: P).  She is also, more flatteringly, given the title as the Most Talented Woman of Tang.  And the Tang Dynasty is, mind you, the most liberal period in Chinese history, even counting modern times.

I was glad to read this book which prompted me to look deeper into Yu’s life and work.  Part of the plot does not fit in with what little was known of the historical figure, though that is the license of fictional creation.  I do wish that the quotations are translated in a more poetic style – they do not quit convey the beautiful nature of the original work, though I understand that poetry translation is probably the hardest of all.  I also do not quite understand how the author created Lily with an almost monstrous streak of meanness.  While she was a child she would kill insects, an act that likely many kids may have done, but in fictional work, such acts are usually reserved for characters to brand them as evil to the core.    While he may want to use this to explain her ultimate crime, it is unnecessary.

I do not remember reading her works during my Chinese Literature classes back in high school.  Maybe her unconventional lifestyle has banned her work from making it to classrooms?  I remember that Li Qingzhao’s work was thoroughly discussed, and she was a upperclass housewife with a doting husband. However, reading Passing Under Heaven, I was reminded of a saying by my Ch. Lit teacher, Miss Wong: there are two types tragedies: one made by tragedic events (being at the wrong place at the wrong time), and tragedic personalities (personalities that make other people hate or misunderstand a person.)  Yu is definitely a poster child of the latter.  She could have been so happy, so loved, and lived a comfortable life to death.  Her wilfulness ruined it all, she had nobody to blame but herself.

And, for those who are interested, here’s the “official” biography of Yu’s short and sad life.  A life that, in fact, is more unfortunate than the fictional one.

<POSSIBLE SPOILER>

There was no mention of adoption, but Yu’s father died early and she was working as a washing maid with her mother when the famous poet Wen discovered her. He became her mentor, though there was no indication that there was anything beyond a teacher/student, father/daughter relationship or friendship.  Once when they went to view the public exam announcement, she wrote a poem on the wall, whcih drew Li Zian’s attention.  Wen gladly became the matchmaker, considering them a young, talented and handsome couple.  They had a lovely honeymoon, but Li’s wife was extremely jealous of Yu and beat the girl with a stick the moment she stepped into the house.  The beating went on till three days later, Li sent Yu off to a monastary till he straightened things out.  Yu was only 17 then.  She later found out that Li had moved away with his wife, and she was abandonned.  When the abbot of the monastery died, Yu started inviting admirers to visit, for drinks, literary discussion and more, making a notorious name for herself.  One day, she killed her maid out of suspicion that she had an affair with her sponsor.  She was beheaded for her crime, at the age of 24.

Of her poems, the most famous line was: “Easy to find a priceless treasure. Hard to find a loving man.”