Category: Memoirs

Categories
2010 Memoirs Non Fiction

The Hare with Amber Eyes by Edmund de Waal

The Hare With Amber Eyes: A Hidden Inheritance

Winner of the 2010 Costa Biography Prize

Five words from the blurb: Japanese, carvings, history, family, century

Last year I tried to read The Hare with Amber Eyes, but abandoned it after about 50 pages. I was therefore a bit disappointed when my brand new book club picked it as their first title. Unwilling to be defeated by the very first book I battled through the entire thing. Unfortunately it wasn’t to my taste, but it did at least provoke a good discussion.

The book is a history of the author’s family. Edmund de Waal inherited a collection of tiny Japanese carvings called “netsuke” and, by investigating the way these passed through the generations, he charts the story of his family through the last century. Beginning in Paris in 1871, passing through Nazi occupied Vienna, and finishing in Tokyo; the book gives a detailed history of the family as their fortune changes.

Unfortunately this book was too dry for me. It was very well researched, but the details were of no interest to me:

Ten houses down from the Ephrussi household, at number 61, is the house of Abraham Camondo, with his brother Nissim at 63 and their sister Rebecca over the street at number 60. The Camondos, Jewish financiers like the Ephrussi, had come to Paris from Constantinople by way of Venice. The banker Henri Cernuschi, a plutocratic supporter of the Paris Commune, had come to Paris from Italy and lived in chilly magnificence with his Japanese treasures on the edge of the park. At number 55 is the Hotel Cattaui, home to a family of Jewish bankers from Egypt. At number 43 is the palace of Adolphe de Rothschild…..

I just didn’t care! I wanted to know about the lives of these people – their thoughts and emotions.  I didn’t care who they lived next to or how their house was constructed. 

It probably didn’t help that I have no interest in art or classical music and so the famous names mentioned did nothing for me. I was also well aware of the plight of Jews in occupied Vienna and so none of the details were new to me. There were some beautifully described scenes, but I’m afraid these weren’t enough to make up for the long boring sections. 

The first and last chapters, in which the author described his own thoughts, were the only ones that contained any emotion. I wished he’d been able to inject this emotion into other members of his family. I also wished that he’d been able to include more information about the life of his gay uncle. The story of a homosexual man living in less tolerant times would have been far more interesting than the story he actually told. 

Overall this book was too dry and boring for me. Recommended to those who love the history of art.

stars2

 

.

My Book Club

The first meeting of my new book club went really well. It was a lovely group of women and we had a great discussion about the book. I was a bit worried about going to the meeting having had such a negative reaction to the first book, but luckily most of the group felt the same way I did! Only one member of the group enjoyed The Hare with Amber Eyes, but we managed to discuss its positive attributes and its flaws without any bad vibes. I’m looking forward to discussing the next book, Cloud Atlas, and getting to know these lovely women better.

Categories
2012 Books in Translation Memoirs

A Death in the Family by Karl Ove Knausgaard

A Death in the Family Translated from the Norwegian by Don Bartlett

Five words from the blurb: childhood, teenage, Norway, father, death

Karl Ove Knausgaard is a publishing phenomenon in Norway. His controversial fictional memoir has dominated the best seller lists there for the last three years. The discussions about this book intrigued me and so I made a note of the title, keen to read it once the English translation appeared. An unsolicited review copy dropped through my letter box and so I was lucky enough to read this before publication, but it was only once I’d finished reading it that I discovered that this is actually the first of six books, totalling over 3000 pages.

A Death in the Family covers Karl Ove Knausgaard’s childhood and teenage years. Very little happens, but the writing is so vivid that this doesn’t really matter. I’m normally bored by simple coming-of-ages stories, but the insight and tiny details brought this book to life. I think this is one of the best pieces of writing I’ve ever come across and I can only imagine the fantastic book he’d produce if the subject matter was more exciting.

The quality of the writing is so good that it is possible to open the book randomly and find a good quote. On top of the realistic portrayal of family life there are thought provoking philosophical questions and advice about being a writer:

You know too little and it doesn’t exist. You know too much and it doesn’t exist. Writing is drawing the essence of what we know out of the shadows.

I think this book will have greater appeal to men because they’ll have experienced most of the events and so have the ability to reminisce about their childhood. The masculine outlook on life will be of interest to women, but there wont be the same level of connection.

I wouldn’t knowingly start a 3000 page autobiography about a Norwegian writer, but now that I’ve read the first section I am keen to read the rest. I’m sure that his adult life will contain more complexity than his childhood, but even if it doesn’t I’ll be happy learning about Knausgaard’s outlook on life.

Recommended to anyone who appreciates great writing.

.

After reading this book the majority of Knausgaard’s family no longer have anything to do with him. You can read more about the controversy surrounding this book here.

 

 

Categories
2000 - 2007 Memoirs

Riding the Black Cockatoo by John Damalis

Riding the Black Cockatoo

Five words from the blurb: Australia, skull, Aboriginal, return, descendants

Riding the Black Cockatoo is the memoir of an Australian man whose family displayed an Aboriginal skull on their mantelpiece for 40 years. He decides to return it to its native home, discovering lots of facts about Aboriginal people along the way.

This book has recently become a set text for GCSE English and I can see why. It is fast paced and easy to read, but effectively manages to capture the author’s changing perspective of Aboriginal society.

The book begins with brutal honesty, recalling the rampant racism of his childhood. The jokes that were in regular circulation are shocking to read now and show how far things have come in just a few decades.

As an Australian of Greek descent who weathered the taunts of ‘wog boy’ throughout my childhood, I remembered the feeling of relief when the bedraggled Vietnamese boat people started washing up onto our shores in the late 1970s. Suddenly the attention shifted from wogs to the newly arrived slopes and geeks. Yet despite the ever-shifting focus of racism in this country, Indigenous Australians have continuously occupied the bottom rung of the ladder.

John Damalis explains how he became ashamed by the presence of the skull and set about researching its origin. Unfortunately, for the reader, the journey of discovery was very short and easy. Everything was over quickly and lacked the depth I’d have liked. I’ve read a few Australian books, but wouldn’t say I know a vast amount about Aboriginal society, so it was disappointing that this book failed to teach me anything of value.

The writing style also began to grate on me after a while. Explanation marks were everywhere! The chatty, informal style will appeal to some, but I’d have preferred a bit more focus as I sometimes felt that the book trivialised events.

I think this is one of those cases where the flaws can be seen as a positive. This book will provoke discussion and is a perfect introduction to cultural studies, especially for teenagers.  But next time I want to learn about the Aborigines I’ll ensure I read a book written by someone who know a bit more about them.

.

 

I read this book as part of Australian Literature Month at Reading Matters. Head over there to find more Australian fiction recommendations.

 

Categories
2011 Memoirs

The Possessed – Elif Batuman

Five words from the blurb: funny, thoughtful, Russian, writers, travels

I love the idea of Russian literature, but I have to admit that it scares me and so I have yet to try any (apart from The Master And Margarita, which scared me even more!) This book appealed to me because it allows the reader to glimpse into the world of Russian literature in an entertaining and less imposing way.

The Possessed is part memoir, part travelogue and follows Batuman through her Russian studies at Stanford University, to her adventures travelling through California, Turkey, Uzbekistan, Hungary and Russia. The book is littered with interesting little snippets of information about Russian authors and their texts.

On the third day of the Tolstoy conference, a professor from Yale read a paper on tennis. In Anna Karenina, he began, Tolstoy represents tennis in a very negative light. Anna and Vronsky swat futilely at the tiny ball, poised on the edge of a vast spiritual and moral abyss. When he wrote that scene, Tolstoy himself had never played tennis, which he only knew as an English fad. At the age of sixty-eight, Tolstoy was given a tennis racket and taught the rules of the game. He became an instant tennis addict.

But unfortunately I was less keen on the travelogue aspects of the book and frequently found my mind drifting from the page. There were too many unnecessary details and I felt that these detracted from the more insightful sections about Russian literature.

A few days after visiting Gur-i-Amir, we went to the old Soviet department store in the Russian part of the city to buy Eric some pants.

I’m pleased that I read The Possessed because it has inspired me to pick up some of the Russian classics, but I wish that the book had concentrated on the books rather than the travelling. check this out for more about travelling.

.

Categories
2010 Audio Book Memoirs

BBC Radio Dramatisation of Direct Red by Gabriel Weston

I have been wanting to read this book ever since I heard Gabriel Weston talk at a library event last year; so when I spotted that the BBC had created a dramatised version I started listening immediately. This book is just as witty, intelligent and insightful as I had hoped it would be and I urge you to listen to it before it disappears from the BBC iplayer* tomorrow evening (10:00PM GMT Fri, 18 Mar 2011).

Direct Red is a memoir of the author’s life as a surgeon. In a series of short stories she reveals the truth about life inside a hospital. She explains exactly what doctors are thinking about as they deal with patients – revealing everything from the initial embarrassment of dealing with genitalia to the heartbreak of seeing people die. I’m sure that some people in the medical profession will object to the public learning that their minds are not always on the task in hand, or that lives are often put in danger by a lack of staff, but I found the insight into hospital life fascinating.

If you are squeamish then this book probably isn’t for you as there are many graphic descriptions of medical procedures. I must also warn you that some of the scenes are very distressing and most do not have a happy outcome.

If you have ever thought that audiobooks are a waste of time then I urge you to give this a try – the cast of excellent actors add an extra dimension to the text.

This is a well written, emotional, insight into the mind of a surgeon. Highly recommended.

.

* I think there may be problems listening to this outside the UK. If this is the case then I’m sure the text version is worth reading.

Categories
2000 - 2007 Memoirs Non Fiction

Born on a Blue Day – Daniel Tammet

Born on a Blue Day is the memoir of Daniel Tammet, a man who is probably unique in the world. Daniel not only has Savant Syndrome, a rare form of Asperger’s that produces amazing mental powers, but also synaesthesia, the ability to see numbers and words as specific colours and textures. This combination of conditions means that he is able to learn new languages in just a few weeks and they helped him to break a Guinness World Record by remembering Pi to 22,515 digits.

I found the whole book fascinating. Daniel explains exactly what he see and feels, giving the reader a good understanding of both Asperger’s and synaesthesia.

Thinking of calendars always makes me feel good, all those numbers and patterns in one place. Different days of the week elicit different colours and emotions in my head: Tuesdays are a warm colour while Thursdays are fuzzy.

It was particularly comforting for me to read about his early life, as my son (who has Asperger’s) exhibited many of the things he described (e.g. a constant need for rocking as in infant) which I haven’t seen in other books before.

After describing a difficult childhood, in which he felt isolated from his peers, Daniel describes how he found independence by taking a teaching job in Lithuania. He goes onto explain how he came to terms with his medical conditions and now helps scientists to try to understand differences in brain function.

I found the final section, in which he explains how he came to realise that he was gay and finally find love, particularly touching.

He isn’t the best writer in the world and his Asperger’s syndrome tends to mean he goes into unnecessary detail in some areas, but for the insight into this unique mind it is well worth putting up with less than perfect prose.

Recommended to everyone, but I think this is a ‘must read’ for anyone with an interest in Asperger’s or synaesthesia.