Category: Other Prizes

Categories
2008 Non Fiction Other Prizes

Leviathan – Philip Hoare

  Winner of the 2009 BBC Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction

Five words from the blurb: whales, humans, Melville, history, gigantic

I didn’t mean to read Leviathan this month, but I picked up a copy and couldn’t put it down. Leviathan contains everything that you’d ever want to know about whales; including their natural history, their interactions with humans and their role in literature.  

The book was packed with the type of facts that I love –  almost every other page contained something that I wanted to share with whoever happened to be closest to me. My family began mocking my new obsession with whales, but how can you not want to share a fact like this?!

A sperm whale can create a two-hundred-decibel boom able to travel one hundred miles along the ‘sofar’ channel, a layer of deep water that readily conducts noise. It seems strange that such a physically enormous creature should rely on something so intangible; but bull sperm whales, by virtue of their larger heads, generate sounds so powerful that they may stun or even kill their prey. These directional acoustic bursts, focused through their foreheads and likened to gunshots, are the equivalent, as one writer notes, of the whale killing its quarry by shouting very loudly at it.

I also discovered:

  • A sperm whale can eat 700 squid in one day.
  • Sperm whales were not filmed underwater until 1984.
  • A killer whale used to live in Windsor Safari Park.
  • A man is said to have been recovered alive from the stomach of a sperm whale several hours after being eaten by it.

I now have the ability to talk about whales for several hours!

One slight problem I had with the book was that I hadn’t read Moby-Dick. I’m sure that some of the sections would have been more meaningful had this been the case, but it has at least persuaded me to read it soon.

The only other tiny issue I had was that most of the photographs were very small and grainy. I can understand why this would be the case for the older examples, but even some of the more modern ones were unclear.  This book would have been improved greatly with the addition of a few larger, clearer photographs.

On a more positive note, I thought the writing was fantastic. It effortlessly guided the reader from one topic to the next; managing to move from lighter humor to the darker aspects of whaling without any drop in pace.

I loved this book and will be forcing it into the hands of several people over the coming months. I highly recommend that you get hold of a copy.

Categories
2010 Books in Translation Other Prizes

Three Sisters – Bi Feiyu

 Winner of 2010 Man Asian Literary Prize

Translated from the Chinese by Howard Goldblatt and Sylvia Li-chun Lin

Five words from the blurb: sisters, China, power, society, family

Three Sisters gives a fascinating insight into the life of Chinese women in the 1970s. By observing the differences between three sisters we see how the status of their birth position affects everything that happens to them.

The Three Sisters

  • Yumi uses her status as the eldest daughter to gain the respect of all those around her. This power ensures that she easily finds a favourable marriage and so has a far greater chance of achieving a happy life.
  • Yuxiu, the third sister, must use as much charm as possible to negotiate opportunities for herself.
  • Yuyang, the seventh sister, must rely on her talents alone, having none of the power that being an older sibling brings.

The book showed each sister in turn, allowing us to connect to them completely. It did a wonderful job of showing the Chinese culture, particularly by explaining their inner thoughts and fears.  The importance of ‘saving face’ was high on all their agendas and this book was great at explaining their actions in an easy to understand, but vivid way.

….everyone in town knew Yuxiu’s secret. She assumed that no one knew, but they all did. This is generally how private matters are treated. It is as if they are screened by a sheet of paper so flimsy it cannot withstand a simple poke but so sturdy everyone will avoid it. Only country folk are so uncouth and impatient that they need to get to the bottom of things at once. Townsfolk aren’t like that at all. Some things are not meant to be poked open; exposing them spoils the fun. What’s the hurry? You cannot wrap fire in paper; sooner or later it will burn through and everything will be exposed. That is more spectacular, more appealing.

I found the last section to be less interesting than the others, but it was still enjoyable. My only complaint is that the book did not end well. I don’t mean that it was sad, just that it was abrupt and didn’t come to any logical conclusions. I would have liked to see all three sisters mentioned on the final pages, not just a slightly odd scene containing only the youngest. This is a minor quibble though. It is a beautifully written book and I’m sure it will be loved by many people.

As an introduction to Chinese literature, this is an ideal choice. It is well paced and contains a depth of emotion. I’d recommend this book to anyone interested in Chinese literature, but I think the focus on family relationships will mean that it will be appreciated by women more than men.

Categories
2010 Chick Lit Other Prizes

The Hand That First Held Mine – Maggie O’Farrell

 Winner of 2010 Costa Book Award for Fiction

Five words from the blurb: Soho, birth, motherhood, women, connected.

The Hand That First Held Mine has a dual narrative which follows two women who are separated by 50 years in time, but dealing with many of the same issues. The first thread follows Lexie, a 21-year-old girl, who leaves her 1950s Devon home to start a new life in London. She begins a relationship with a married man and struggles to deal with the problems this causes.

The second thread follows Elina, a Finnish woman who has just given birth to her first baby. The traumatic emergency caesarean affected her and her partner, Ted, deeply. As both struggle to come to terms with the near-death experience they also have to learn to look after their demanding new baby. The writing was vivid and packed with emotion – perfectly describing the turmoil that a new baby brings to a household.

Ted registers again how pale she is, how dark and deep are the circles around her eyes, how thin her limbs look. He is possessed with an urge to apologise – for what he isn’t sure. He scans his mind for something to say, something light and perhaps witty, something to take them out of themselves, to remind them that life is not all like this. But he can’t think of anything and now the baby is rearing back, crying, fidgeting, fists flailing, and Elina is having to open her eyes, sit up again, lift him to her shoulder, rub his back, untangle his hands from her hair and Ted cannot bear it.

I connected with Elina’s thread much more than Lexie’s. I think this is a combination of the fact that I have young children and so can relate to the feelings of a new mother, but also because I have little sympathy for someone who has an affair with a married man. Lexie’s thread felt like a well written piece of chick-lit whilst Elina’s thread had a bit more depth than that.

Both threads come together towards the end of the book, but rather than being impressed by the connection it all felt a bit contrived to me.

The book was easy to read and gripping in places, but I wished that the plot had been a bit more complex or thought-provoking. This book reminded me of  Peripheral Vision, but I felt that The Hand That First Held Mine didn’t have the same complexity or depth. I’m still thinking about the issues of motherhood raised in Peripheral Vision, whilst The Hand That First Held Mine offered no new perspective on the subject.

Overall, this was an entertaining diversion, but I don’t expect to remember much about it in a few months time.

The thoughts of other bloggers:

Every word is perfectly chosen, every sentence is perfectly constructed. Fleur Fisher in her World

…it didn’t pack the same punch for me as After You’d Gone… Leafing Through Life

It’s a vivid story of motherhood that honors the whole woman. The Literate Housewife

Categories
2000 - 2007 Books in Translation Other Prizes

Wolf Totem – Jiang Rong

 Winner 2007 Man Asian Literary Prize

Translated from the Chinese by Howard Goldblatt

I bought a copy of Wolf Totem after I met The Book Whisperer and she raved about it. It is her favourite book of all time and as I love books set in Asia I decided to give it a try.

Wolf Totem is set on the Mongolian grasslands and describes the constant battle that the nomads have with the wolves that live there. The relationship the people have with the wolves is confused when Chen Zhen, an intellectual from Beijing, captures a wolf cub and starts to raise it. The book is based on the real life events of the author, who answered Chairman Mao’s 1969 call for city dwellers to experience life in the mountains.

This book goes some way to explaining what life was like for the Mongolian nomads, but it concentrates on the difficulties that wolves brought to their lives. We witness packs of wolves massacring their animals and the nomad’s attempts to kill the wolves. It was fascinating to learn about the behaviour of wolves, but I suspect the graphic nature of the hunts will be too much for some.

I enjoyed the excitement of the chase, but by the half way stage I began to tire of the endless battle between man and wolf. This book is 500+ pages long and after a while one wolf hunt became much like all the others. I longed to learn about other aspects of life in the grasslands and perhaps witness some of the human relationships.

I also felt that the writing quality was that of great fiction, not literature. There was no depth or poetry to the language – it was simply there to inform.

These things are never easy for the Mongols. Gasmai only has the one son, and still she didn’t stop him from grabbing a wolf’s tail or crawling into a den. The old Chinese saying ‘Don’t fight wolves if you’re unwilling to sacrifice your son’ must have come from the grassland. Don’t forget, the Mongols ruled China for nearly a century. I used to think it meant using your son as wolf bait, believe it or not. Now I realize it means letting your son risk crawling into a wolf’s den to get the cubs. Only a youngster could handle a tunnel this deep and narrow.

I did learn a lot of interesting facts about the wolves and am pleased I read the book, but I wish it had been slightly shorter.

Recommended to anyone who’d like to know more about wolves, in all their gruesome glory.

Categories
2000 - 2007 Commonwealth Writer's Prize Other Prizes

The Harmony Silk Factory – Tash Aw

  

Winner of 2005 Commonwealth Writers’ Prize (South East Asia and South Pacific Region, Best First Book) and 2005 Whitbread First Novel Award  

The Harmony Silk Factory is set in Malaysia during the early 1940s – a period in which the Japanese began their invasion of the country. The book is divided into three parts, each telling the story of Johnny Lim, a textile merchant with a shady past, from a different perspective.

The book started off really well. The writing was fantastic and I was quickly drawn into the account of Johnny’s early life, as told by his son, Jasper.  Johnny was a fantastic character – I loved seeing the way he got out of various scrapes and rose to become one of the most important men in the area.

Some people are born with a streak of malice running through them. It poisons their blood for ever, swimming in their veins like a mysterious virus. It may lurk unnoticed for many years, surfacing only occasionally. Good times may temporarily suppress these instincts, and the person may even appear well intentioned and honest. Sooner or later, however, the cold hatred wins over. It is an incurable condition.

Unfortunately, the wonderful story telling came to an abrupt end as we reached part 2 (p120). The narrator switched to Snow (Johnny’s wife) and the prose took the form of a diary. The story of how Johnny and Snow came to marry was nowhere near as interesting as part 1 and the diary made the pace slower. Very little happened in this section and my mind wandered from the page at several points.

Part 3 was narrated by Englishman, Peter Wormwood, and repeated many of the events recounted earlier in the book, but from a slightly different perspective. I never warmed to Wormwood and found it a real chore to read most of this section. I recognise that the point is to show how people can view the same person in a different light, but it meant that I struggled to maintain an emotional connection throughout the narrative. I wish that the whole book had been written in the style of the first part and not tried to get too clever.

Overall there was a lot to enjoy in this book, but the frustrating final section left the book on a low note.

Have you read Tash Aw’s latest book, Map of the Invisible World?

Is is better than this one?

Categories
2008 Other Prizes Romance

Star Gazing by Linda Gillard

I don’t read many romance novels, but I received an email from the author explaining that this book had been short-listed for 2 awards in 2009 – Romantic Novel of the Year and the Robin Jenkins Literary Award, the UK’s first environmental book award. This combination of awards intrigued me and so decided to give it a try. I was surprised when readers of Women’s Weekly voted it the best romance novel of the last 50 years as I thought that a more well known author would win, but it made me very curious about the contents of this little book.

Star Gazing is set in Scotland and focuses on Marianne, a blind woman who was widowed in her twenties. Now in her forties and living with her sister in Edinburgh she has resigned herself to a life alone, but all this changes when a mysterious man turns up on her doorstep.

I was immediately impressed by the quality of the writing. The descriptions of what life is like when you are unable to see were amazing and I felt that I came understand how she viewed the world.

I tell sceptics and doubters that I go to the opera because opera pours a vision of a wider world into my ears in a way that excites me. Plays, novels and poems move, entertain and educate me, but they don’t rock me to my foundations and make me see. I can read Tolstoy’s account of the French retreat from Moscow, either in Braille or as an audio-book, but I have never seen a city. Or snow. I’ve never seen a man, let alone an army. Tolstoy uses a visual language that I can read, haltingly. It’s not my mother tongue.
But music I can ‘read’ much more easily. In fact, I don’t need to read it at all. When I hear music it goes directly to my heart, it pierces my soul and stirs me with nameless emotions, countless ideas and aural pictures.

The characters were all well developed and engaging, but this book turned me into a gossiping woman! It was a very weird experience that I have never encountered with a book before. I found that I didn’t like the central character and wanted to slap her on numerous occasions. I told several people about the stupid things she’d done and had lengthy conversations about her decisions. This makes the book a perfect choice for book groups as I guarantee that you will enjoy discussing the events in this book.

I also had a problem with some of the plot towards the end of the book. I don’t want to spoil anything for you, but a few things were a bit far-fetched and I’m afraid I’m a miserable sceptic who has trouble believing that people can have visions of future events.

Despite these criticisms I think the fact I wanted to talk about this book so much proves its quality. I don’t think it is the best romance novel of the last 50 years (The Time Traveller’s Wife  and The Dark Side of Love are my favourites), but it is an original, heartwarming book. 

Recommended.