by Shauna Singh Baldwin
I had read a previous book by this author, the Tiger Claw, about an Indian woman who is a spy during WWII. I enjoyed that book so I thought I would enjoy this book.
Selector of Souls is about two women living in the Himalyan region of India. One of the women, Anu, is from a wealthy family. She is abused by her husband and wants to leave him and become a Catholic Nun. She was born Hindu but a priest saved her life and her father had her baptized Catholic. The other woman Damini, is poor. Her husband died when she was very young and she has been forced to work as a servant to survive.
Anu leaves her husband, but, before he leaves him she ships her young daughter off to her cousin in Canada so that her husband won't have custody of her.
Both women end up in the same village. Anu has trained to become a nurse and is working in a hospital. Damini has become a midwife. Damini is haunted by the fact that she killed a granddaughter of hers, a newborn baby, because neither the child's mother or father wanted her because she was a girl. Damini is taking women for ultrasounds and urging them to abort girls.
Anu meets up with Anu and is shocked at what Damini is doing.
While these two are working in the village there are a number of side stories taking place:
- Anu's cousin has been unable to have a child, despite invitro fertilization and other measures,
- A couple, children of a woman who was Damini's employer, have come to the village and have helped build a church and the hospital where Anu works, but they also want to build subdivisions for rich and tourist Indians. They want to have a son.
- Anu's husband who has been trying to find her, gets Damini's son involved in a religious movement and these zealots destroy the church and the priest is accidentally killed.
- Damini's son should be supporting her but he doesn't have enough money to do so, he rapes a local low caste woman. The daughter-in-law of Damini's former employer has a baby girl but she is so desparate for a boy that she tries to steal the boy. Damini has to arrange for this child to be given up for adoption as the mother cannot afford another child and her husband won't accept him because he is the product of rape.
After the death of the priest, for which Anu feels responsible, she leaves the convent and gets a job as a nurse in a hospital. The book ends with Anu nursing her ex-husband who had been injured in an accident. She has found out that he is beating his second wife. She decides to kill him.
This was a very difficult book to read. I was so sad and angry about
the way people rejected girls and the harshness of the lives of the
women. It was also difficult to see how the caste structure functions, e.g. only low caste people cut the cord on a newborn, or scrub the toilets. The Hindu's believe in reincarnation. It makes you wonder what kind of life these women will be reborn into. Anu realizes that if she kills her husband she will likely have to face him in her next life.
This is the second book I have read about the tyrannical treatment of women, I have had enough of this for now. I have to read something fun or light.
Tuesday, 26 November 2013
Monday, 11 November 2013
Ghost Bride
by Yangsze Choo
I think I had expected an unusual romance story. However, this book was much more unusual than that.
Li Lan is a young Chinese girl who is living in Malaya with her opium addicted father. He had been a successful businessman but seems to have gone to "pot" after his wife died. His money has all been wasted and they are living in poverty.
Li Lan receives an unusual request, to become the Ghost Bride for her cousin who recently died. This means she would be wed to a ghost, which would mean living in his family home, in comfort but with no prospect for love or children.
She turns down the request but is then haunted by dreams from the ghostly bridegroom. She and her nurse go to see a sorcerer who gives her medicine to take a bedtime to avoid the dreams. In the meantime she seem to be falling for the cousin of the dead man, heir to the family fortune. However she fears he may be responsible for his cousins death, Somehow she takes too much and finds herself separated from her body. She likes the freedom of being able to slink around, go through walls. She then meets an unusual man who asks her to go into the Land of the Dead to find some information for her. She decides to do it but also wants to go to find her mother. People gain goods and power in this world based on the offerings their family members make for them in the real world. No offerings, no goods, no power. She offers to be a servant in the dead man's family home, some kind of replica of the real world, in the purgatory land of the dead and is caught out. While there she meets her mothers ghost, she also is working as a servant to the household. She escapes from the house and the nether world with the help of a wandering spirit, but then realizes that the spirit has tricked her and taken over her body.
She is eventually able to get her body back and is proposed to both by the strange otherwordly creature/dragon and by the cousin of the dead man. She eventually finds out who killed the young man, it is not her prospective fiancee. One of his uncle comes to offer to send her to England for an education --- he doesn't want the marriage to take place. Her potential "mother-in-law" tries to kill her and one of the other wives of the family. She realizes if she marries the young man she will hav lots of interpersonal conflict to deal with in that family and she doesn't really love the young man, she wants him to have a chance at love. She decides she would rather have a life with her otherworldy lover than the cousin of the dead man.
This was an interesting story, you weren't sure what to expect or what direction things would go in.
It was different, but kept you engaged.
I think I had expected an unusual romance story. However, this book was much more unusual than that.
Li Lan is a young Chinese girl who is living in Malaya with her opium addicted father. He had been a successful businessman but seems to have gone to "pot" after his wife died. His money has all been wasted and they are living in poverty.
Li Lan receives an unusual request, to become the Ghost Bride for her cousin who recently died. This means she would be wed to a ghost, which would mean living in his family home, in comfort but with no prospect for love or children.
She turns down the request but is then haunted by dreams from the ghostly bridegroom. She and her nurse go to see a sorcerer who gives her medicine to take a bedtime to avoid the dreams. In the meantime she seem to be falling for the cousin of the dead man, heir to the family fortune. However she fears he may be responsible for his cousins death, Somehow she takes too much and finds herself separated from her body. She likes the freedom of being able to slink around, go through walls. She then meets an unusual man who asks her to go into the Land of the Dead to find some information for her. She decides to do it but also wants to go to find her mother. People gain goods and power in this world based on the offerings their family members make for them in the real world. No offerings, no goods, no power. She offers to be a servant in the dead man's family home, some kind of replica of the real world, in the purgatory land of the dead and is caught out. While there she meets her mothers ghost, she also is working as a servant to the household. She escapes from the house and the nether world with the help of a wandering spirit, but then realizes that the spirit has tricked her and taken over her body.
She is eventually able to get her body back and is proposed to both by the strange otherwordly creature/dragon and by the cousin of the dead man. She eventually finds out who killed the young man, it is not her prospective fiancee. One of his uncle comes to offer to send her to England for an education --- he doesn't want the marriage to take place. Her potential "mother-in-law" tries to kill her and one of the other wives of the family. She realizes if she marries the young man she will hav lots of interpersonal conflict to deal with in that family and she doesn't really love the young man, she wants him to have a chance at love. She decides she would rather have a life with her otherworldy lover than the cousin of the dead man.
This was an interesting story, you weren't sure what to expect or what direction things would go in.
It was different, but kept you engaged.
Tuesday, 5 November 2013
Children of the Revolution
by Peter Robinson,
I thought it was time to take a break from the powerful fiction to read a mystery. I have read several of Peter Robinson's books. This one was a typical Robinson story.
The story starts with the murder of a poor, disgraced prof. His body is found on the bottom of a cliff, below a bridge. He had 5000 lbs. in his pocket.
As Banks and his crew investigate the story they are trying to figure out if the explanation dates from the dismissal of the prof four years ago, or from things that happened in the man's youth at univeristy in the 1970's. One of the people who turns up as a person of interest is a woman, the wife of a Lord whose nephew is thought to have potential for the position of Home Secretary.
Banks is warned by his superiors to satay away from the Lord's wife but he keeps working on that angle discreetly and eventually learns the truth. The perpetrator, the woman's brother-in-law, has tried to kill her so the truth doesn't get out, and commits sucide. Banks decides, and is encouraged by his superiors to let the case die, and he does so. I guess this is realistic but it is a bit disappointing that because the "rich and famous" are involved the truth gets hushed. It is ironic in that part of the story involved the main characters being involved in pro-communist activities (children of the revolution)in their youth, railing against the fact that the wealthy had all the options and opportunities. This confirms what they were complaining about.
I can't remember if Banks had compromised his principals like this before. Not one of my favourite Robinson books.
I thought it was time to take a break from the powerful fiction to read a mystery. I have read several of Peter Robinson's books. This one was a typical Robinson story.
The story starts with the murder of a poor, disgraced prof. His body is found on the bottom of a cliff, below a bridge. He had 5000 lbs. in his pocket.
As Banks and his crew investigate the story they are trying to figure out if the explanation dates from the dismissal of the prof four years ago, or from things that happened in the man's youth at univeristy in the 1970's. One of the people who turns up as a person of interest is a woman, the wife of a Lord whose nephew is thought to have potential for the position of Home Secretary.
Banks is warned by his superiors to satay away from the Lord's wife but he keeps working on that angle discreetly and eventually learns the truth. The perpetrator, the woman's brother-in-law, has tried to kill her so the truth doesn't get out, and commits sucide. Banks decides, and is encouraged by his superiors to let the case die, and he does so. I guess this is realistic but it is a bit disappointing that because the "rich and famous" are involved the truth gets hushed. It is ironic in that part of the story involved the main characters being involved in pro-communist activities (children of the revolution)in their youth, railing against the fact that the wealthy had all the options and opportunities. This confirms what they were complaining about.
I can't remember if Banks had compromised his principals like this before. Not one of my favourite Robinson books.
Sunday, 3 November 2013
Lowland
by Jhumpa Lahiri
This is another Mann Booker nominee I wanted to read the Namesake by this author, but never got around to it. This book makes me want to read it in the future.
This is the story of two brothers in India. The oldes one, fifteen months older, is the more quiet, reserved one, his younger brother is the energetic, trouble-maker. The brothers are very close, they both start school at the same time because the younger brother did not want his brother to go to school without them. They are similar in build and as the younger brother's wife says, their voices are very similar.
The lowland is an area near to where they live, which used to flood and then drain with the weather. But the lowland becomes plugged with garbage and litter and developers plan to plug it up to build developments in the future.
The book discusses the 20th century history of India, the British control, how India gained its independence and the politics of the mind 1900's . As the two brothers go to university the younger one gets involved with pro-communist individuals and becomes a revolutionary/terrorist. In making a homemade bomb he blows off the fingers of one hand, which of course will be an obvious sign to police of his activities. The younger brothers activities worry his parents and brother but they don't realize how serious things are and how much danger he is in. The parents are upset more when he elopes and brings a girl home as his wife.
While all this is happening the older brother has moved to the United States, to Rhode Island. He has a brief affair with a woman who is separated from her husband. He is very disappointed when she tells him she plans to reconcile with her husband. The older brother probably would have gone along with an arranged marriage by his parents but this does not happen.
He learns that his brother has been killed by the police. He had been hiding in the lowland marsh. His parents and wife witness his execution by the police from the roof of their house. The older brother returns to India to console his parents (no hope of that.. they cannot let go of their grief). He meets his sister-in-law who is pregnant (her husband didn't know this whe he died). Her inlaws do not like her, they do not speak to her and treat her like a servant. He learns that they plan to keep the child and send her back to her parents (who disowned her when she eloped). He asks her to marry him telling her that she is in danger because of activities her husband had her engage in to support the cause. She agrees to marry him and she joins him in the U.S. She keeps thinking about her first husband, she loved him by she also feels betrayed by how he got her involved with the communist activities.
While she is relieved to be away from her inlaws the bride shows no affection for her new husband. After her baby is born they have sex but it seems passionless. Even more sad, she doesn't seem to have any affection for her child, wanting to have as little contact with her as possible. Her second husband loves the child and the child loves him.
Eventually the woman resumes her studies in philosopy and works on her masters and doctoral degrees. One day her husband comes home to find a note telling him she has been offered a job in California and she is leaving the child to him. Through all the years she makes no attempt to contact her husband nor daughter.
The man is sad, but probably not surprised. He and the girl have a decent life but the young girl is very troubled by her mother leaving.. Her father pays for therapy for her but she never tells him what is bothering her. When the girl finishes university she leaves home and wanders around the country doing various jobs, in some cases just working for room and board. Her father never knows where she is or when she might drop in to visit. Then she returns one day telling him she is pregnant. He is glad to see her and is willing to have her and the baby live with him. He then tells her that he is not her biological father. She is shocked and distraught at this news and leaves his house. But she returns in a few days and asks to stay with him. He of course agrees.
The man is getting older, he contacts his wife and asks for a divorce, he says he wants to leave his house to his daugther. The wife decides to travel to Rhode Island, to see her husband and daughter, perhaps to reconcile with them. When she arrives she meets her dauther and young granddaughter. Her daughter is furious that she has shown up and kicks her out of the house. She leaves, leaving the signed divorce papers behind.
As the book ends, it appears that the father and daughter will be in relationships, the father has married an American woman.
There was a comment in a post on Amazon that sums up the book very well...
"Bela, first appears as a child, and in her toddler's mind "yesterday" means any part of the past, even if it was years ago. In emotional terms, she's not wrong-- forty years ago might as well be yesterday, if what's being remembered matters enough. Our minds are like the lowland, quick to flood but slow to drain. We suffer, we cause suffering, we regret... and yet we go on".
I really had trouble with the behaviour of the boy's parents-- their unabated grieving, the way they treated their daughter-in-law, the disregard for their older son; and especially for the daughter-in-law. I didn't necessarily expect her to love her new husband, although in countries with arranged marriages they claim that couples often grown to like each other. She wallows in her sadness, is unloving, neglectful and walks away from her daughter. I keep trying to justify her behaviour as PTSD, post partum depression, but rather it just seems like selfishness. Lots of people witness and have terrible things done to them and they overcome these difficulties. In this story, the younger brother wants to change the world for he better but his activiites destroy the lives of his entire family. This is not to say one should not fight for justice and freedom, but demonstrates the collateral damage that can occur from "good causes'. I am not sure that the "Mother" regrets the sorrow she inflicted on her daughter and second husband. I was glad her second husband was going to get some degree of affection and a healthy relationship at the end.
I do understand the message the author is giving us, about carrying around negative baggage for years, and I have seen that happen in people and families for smaller "sins' and you hear so much about all the discord within families. I would have liked a bit more from the mother's perspective. We see her actions but learn very little about her feelings, why is she unable to lover her daughter, be more kind to her second husband.
Lots of food for thought!
Notes from the book...
Pp 252-3
"He recognized the house at once. It was the rooming house he'd lived in with Richard...The effect was disquieting. He felt his presence on earth being denied, even as he stood there. He was forbidden access; the past refused to admit him. It only reminded him that this arbitrary place, where he landed and made hsi life, was not his. Like Bela, it had accepted him, while at the same time keeping a distance. Among its people, its trees, its particular geography he had studied and grown to love, he was still a visitor. Perhaps the worst form of visito: one how had refused to leave".
Pp.258-9
"Bella will never marry, she knows this about herself. The unhappiness between her parents: this was the most basic awareness of her life.
When she was younger she'd been angry at her father, more angry than she'd been at her mother. She'd blamed him for driving her mother away, and for not figuring out how to bring her back.... She craves a different pace sometimes, but doesn't know what else she might do".
Pp.268-9 (Bella has learned about her real father)
"When her mother had left Rhode Island, she'd taken her unhappiness with her, no longer sharing it, leaving Bela with a lack of access to that signal instead. What had seemed impossible had happened, the mountain was gone.
In its place was a heavy stone, like certain stones imbedded deep in the sand when she dug on the beach. Too large to unearth, its surface partly visible, but its contours unknown.
She taughter herself to ignore it, to walk away. And yet the hole remained her hollow point of origin, the cold crosshairs of her existence.
She returned to it now. At last the sand gave way, and she was able to pry out what was buried, to raise it from its enclosure. She felt its dimensions, its heft in her hands. She felt the strain it sent through her body, before hurtling it once and for all into the sea".
If her father had told her the truth sooner, would she have adjusted better to her mother leaving?
P. 322
"I can't become a father Gauri. After a moment he added. Not after what I've done (accomplice to murder of a policeman)... Whatever happened he only regretted one thing, that he had not met her sooner, that he had not known her everday of his life".
P 323
"She recalled the thrill of meeting him, of being adored by him. The moment of losing him. The fury of how he'd implicated her. The ache of bringing Bela into the world after he was gone".
This is another Mann Booker nominee I wanted to read the Namesake by this author, but never got around to it. This book makes me want to read it in the future.
This is the story of two brothers in India. The oldes one, fifteen months older, is the more quiet, reserved one, his younger brother is the energetic, trouble-maker. The brothers are very close, they both start school at the same time because the younger brother did not want his brother to go to school without them. They are similar in build and as the younger brother's wife says, their voices are very similar.
The lowland is an area near to where they live, which used to flood and then drain with the weather. But the lowland becomes plugged with garbage and litter and developers plan to plug it up to build developments in the future.
The book discusses the 20th century history of India, the British control, how India gained its independence and the politics of the mind 1900's . As the two brothers go to university the younger one gets involved with pro-communist individuals and becomes a revolutionary/terrorist. In making a homemade bomb he blows off the fingers of one hand, which of course will be an obvious sign to police of his activities. The younger brothers activities worry his parents and brother but they don't realize how serious things are and how much danger he is in. The parents are upset more when he elopes and brings a girl home as his wife.
While all this is happening the older brother has moved to the United States, to Rhode Island. He has a brief affair with a woman who is separated from her husband. He is very disappointed when she tells him she plans to reconcile with her husband. The older brother probably would have gone along with an arranged marriage by his parents but this does not happen.
He learns that his brother has been killed by the police. He had been hiding in the lowland marsh. His parents and wife witness his execution by the police from the roof of their house. The older brother returns to India to console his parents (no hope of that.. they cannot let go of their grief). He meets his sister-in-law who is pregnant (her husband didn't know this whe he died). Her inlaws do not like her, they do not speak to her and treat her like a servant. He learns that they plan to keep the child and send her back to her parents (who disowned her when she eloped). He asks her to marry him telling her that she is in danger because of activities her husband had her engage in to support the cause. She agrees to marry him and she joins him in the U.S. She keeps thinking about her first husband, she loved him by she also feels betrayed by how he got her involved with the communist activities.
While she is relieved to be away from her inlaws the bride shows no affection for her new husband. After her baby is born they have sex but it seems passionless. Even more sad, she doesn't seem to have any affection for her child, wanting to have as little contact with her as possible. Her second husband loves the child and the child loves him.
Eventually the woman resumes her studies in philosopy and works on her masters and doctoral degrees. One day her husband comes home to find a note telling him she has been offered a job in California and she is leaving the child to him. Through all the years she makes no attempt to contact her husband nor daughter.
The man is sad, but probably not surprised. He and the girl have a decent life but the young girl is very troubled by her mother leaving.. Her father pays for therapy for her but she never tells him what is bothering her. When the girl finishes university she leaves home and wanders around the country doing various jobs, in some cases just working for room and board. Her father never knows where she is or when she might drop in to visit. Then she returns one day telling him she is pregnant. He is glad to see her and is willing to have her and the baby live with him. He then tells her that he is not her biological father. She is shocked and distraught at this news and leaves his house. But she returns in a few days and asks to stay with him. He of course agrees.
The man is getting older, he contacts his wife and asks for a divorce, he says he wants to leave his house to his daugther. The wife decides to travel to Rhode Island, to see her husband and daughter, perhaps to reconcile with them. When she arrives she meets her dauther and young granddaughter. Her daughter is furious that she has shown up and kicks her out of the house. She leaves, leaving the signed divorce papers behind.
As the book ends, it appears that the father and daughter will be in relationships, the father has married an American woman.
There was a comment in a post on Amazon that sums up the book very well...
"Bela, first appears as a child, and in her toddler's mind "yesterday" means any part of the past, even if it was years ago. In emotional terms, she's not wrong-- forty years ago might as well be yesterday, if what's being remembered matters enough. Our minds are like the lowland, quick to flood but slow to drain. We suffer, we cause suffering, we regret... and yet we go on".
I really had trouble with the behaviour of the boy's parents-- their unabated grieving, the way they treated their daughter-in-law, the disregard for their older son; and especially for the daughter-in-law. I didn't necessarily expect her to love her new husband, although in countries with arranged marriages they claim that couples often grown to like each other. She wallows in her sadness, is unloving, neglectful and walks away from her daughter. I keep trying to justify her behaviour as PTSD, post partum depression, but rather it just seems like selfishness. Lots of people witness and have terrible things done to them and they overcome these difficulties. In this story, the younger brother wants to change the world for he better but his activiites destroy the lives of his entire family. This is not to say one should not fight for justice and freedom, but demonstrates the collateral damage that can occur from "good causes'. I am not sure that the "Mother" regrets the sorrow she inflicted on her daughter and second husband. I was glad her second husband was going to get some degree of affection and a healthy relationship at the end.
I do understand the message the author is giving us, about carrying around negative baggage for years, and I have seen that happen in people and families for smaller "sins' and you hear so much about all the discord within families. I would have liked a bit more from the mother's perspective. We see her actions but learn very little about her feelings, why is she unable to lover her daughter, be more kind to her second husband.
Lots of food for thought!
Notes from the book...
Pp 252-3
"He recognized the house at once. It was the rooming house he'd lived in with Richard...The effect was disquieting. He felt his presence on earth being denied, even as he stood there. He was forbidden access; the past refused to admit him. It only reminded him that this arbitrary place, where he landed and made hsi life, was not his. Like Bela, it had accepted him, while at the same time keeping a distance. Among its people, its trees, its particular geography he had studied and grown to love, he was still a visitor. Perhaps the worst form of visito: one how had refused to leave".
Pp.258-9
"Bella will never marry, she knows this about herself. The unhappiness between her parents: this was the most basic awareness of her life.
When she was younger she'd been angry at her father, more angry than she'd been at her mother. She'd blamed him for driving her mother away, and for not figuring out how to bring her back.... She craves a different pace sometimes, but doesn't know what else she might do".
Pp.268-9 (Bella has learned about her real father)
"When her mother had left Rhode Island, she'd taken her unhappiness with her, no longer sharing it, leaving Bela with a lack of access to that signal instead. What had seemed impossible had happened, the mountain was gone.
In its place was a heavy stone, like certain stones imbedded deep in the sand when she dug on the beach. Too large to unearth, its surface partly visible, but its contours unknown.
She taughter herself to ignore it, to walk away. And yet the hole remained her hollow point of origin, the cold crosshairs of her existence.
She returned to it now. At last the sand gave way, and she was able to pry out what was buried, to raise it from its enclosure. She felt its dimensions, its heft in her hands. She felt the strain it sent through her body, before hurtling it once and for all into the sea".
If her father had told her the truth sooner, would she have adjusted better to her mother leaving?
P. 322
"I can't become a father Gauri. After a moment he added. Not after what I've done (accomplice to murder of a policeman)... Whatever happened he only regretted one thing, that he had not met her sooner, that he had not known her everday of his life".
P 323
"She recalled the thrill of meeting him, of being adored by him. The moment of losing him. The fury of how he'd implicated her. The ache of bringing Bela into the world after he was gone".
Friday, 1 November 2013
A Tale for the Time Being
by Ruth Ozeki,
This was one of the book's nominate for the Mann Booker Prize this year. Again, I have to ask, why did they choose the Luminaries as the winner????
This was a fascinating book, I found it hard to put down. I have never read anything by this author but I think I will want to read more of her work.
“A Tale for the Time Being is an extraordinary novel about a courageous young woman, riven by loneliness, by time, and (ultimately) by tsunami. Nao is an inspired narrator and her quest to tell her great grandmother’s story, to connect with her past, with the world, is both aching and true. Ozeki is one of my favorite novelists and here she is at her absolute best—bewitching, intelligent, hilarious, and heartbreaking, often on the same page. A Tale for the Time Being is one of those novels that will renew your faith in literature.” - Junot Díaz, National Book Award finalist and author of the Pulitzer Prize winner The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
How to explain this book and its appeal? The story is about a woman on an island on the west coast of BC who finds a package washed up on the shore. She opens it to find an Hello Kitty lunchbox with some letters in French, a strange book, it bears the cover of a Marcel Proust book but the contents have been replaced with blank pages and the book has been used as a diary by a Japanese girl. The main character Ruth is Japanese (a reflection of the author???) so she can read the diary. She is a writer, but seems to be suffering from writer's block (like the author??).
The diary desribes the life of a teenage Japanese girl who is the victim of vicious abuse by her classmates and whose father is unemployed and suicidal. The young girl, Nao (Now) is also thinking of suicide. As the author reads the diary she tries to track down the girl and her family on the Internet but she is unsuccessful.
Nao's parents send her to spend the summer with her great-grandmother, a buddhist nun who is 104 years old. The grandmother tries to teach Nao some Supapowas (superpowers). Nao also learns about her father's uncle who was forced to be a kamikaze pilot. He was a philosophy student nad pacifist. He was brutalized in his military training. He wrote his true experiences in the military in French so that the officials would not know what he was saying. As the story proceeds the truth about him is revealed and Nao is happy to share the truth about her uncle with her father, who was named after him.
As the main characters struggles with her own life and goals, weather troubles and her strange artist husband she becomes obsessessed with the story, even dreaming part of the story, and at one point even seems to intercede in the story to save the father's life.
I think the story explores understanding who you are, peace, truth versus assumptions that can harm relationships between people, the importance of being "in time" living in the now and liking it rather than living in the past or the future.
It was an engrossing story, it plays with the ideas of time, role of writer and reader. I really enjoyed it.
This was one of the book's nominate for the Mann Booker Prize this year. Again, I have to ask, why did they choose the Luminaries as the winner????
This was a fascinating book, I found it hard to put down. I have never read anything by this author but I think I will want to read more of her work.
“A Tale for the Time Being is an extraordinary novel about a courageous young woman, riven by loneliness, by time, and (ultimately) by tsunami. Nao is an inspired narrator and her quest to tell her great grandmother’s story, to connect with her past, with the world, is both aching and true. Ozeki is one of my favorite novelists and here she is at her absolute best—bewitching, intelligent, hilarious, and heartbreaking, often on the same page. A Tale for the Time Being is one of those novels that will renew your faith in literature.” - Junot Díaz, National Book Award finalist and author of the Pulitzer Prize winner The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
How to explain this book and its appeal? The story is about a woman on an island on the west coast of BC who finds a package washed up on the shore. She opens it to find an Hello Kitty lunchbox with some letters in French, a strange book, it bears the cover of a Marcel Proust book but the contents have been replaced with blank pages and the book has been used as a diary by a Japanese girl. The main character Ruth is Japanese (a reflection of the author???) so she can read the diary. She is a writer, but seems to be suffering from writer's block (like the author??).
The diary desribes the life of a teenage Japanese girl who is the victim of vicious abuse by her classmates and whose father is unemployed and suicidal. The young girl, Nao (Now) is also thinking of suicide. As the author reads the diary she tries to track down the girl and her family on the Internet but she is unsuccessful.
Nao's parents send her to spend the summer with her great-grandmother, a buddhist nun who is 104 years old. The grandmother tries to teach Nao some Supapowas (superpowers). Nao also learns about her father's uncle who was forced to be a kamikaze pilot. He was a philosophy student nad pacifist. He was brutalized in his military training. He wrote his true experiences in the military in French so that the officials would not know what he was saying. As the story proceeds the truth about him is revealed and Nao is happy to share the truth about her uncle with her father, who was named after him.
As the main characters struggles with her own life and goals, weather troubles and her strange artist husband she becomes obsessessed with the story, even dreaming part of the story, and at one point even seems to intercede in the story to save the father's life.
I think the story explores understanding who you are, peace, truth versus assumptions that can harm relationships between people, the importance of being "in time" living in the now and liking it rather than living in the past or the future.
It was an engrossing story, it plays with the ideas of time, role of writer and reader. I really enjoyed it.
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