Category: 2000 – 2007

Categories
2000 - 2007 Recommended books

Boy in the Striped Pyjamas – John Boyne

The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas is a simple, but powerful story of the friendship between two boys. It is told through the eyes of nine-year-old Bruno, who is forced to leave his childhood home in Berlin, and live next to a concentration camp in Poland. He forms a friendship with Shmuel, a young Jewish boy, who by coincidence was born on the same day as him. By talking through the fence, Shmuel slowly explains the horrors of the war to Bruno.

I think that this is the most distressing story about WWII I have ever read. There are no graphic descriptions, it is all left up to your imagination, and it is this that makes it so harrowing. Everything is seen through Bruno’s eyes, and so I built up a very strong connection with him. Bruno fails to comprehend the situation around him, and his suggestions about how things could be improved are incredibly touching.

The writing is easily accessible, and feels realistically like that of a child. The happy innocence of Bruno’s childhood is a beautiful thing. I loved the way that his parents tried to shelter him from the war, but am not sure that this was realistically possible. Surely a nine-year-old boy living in Berlin would have had Nazi opinions forced onto him in school? There were certain other aspects of the book that didn’t ring true, I won’t go into them, as I don’t want to spoil it for people who haven’t read the book. I’m willing to overlook them, as the message of the book is more important than a few details.

This book made me smile, it almost made me cry, and then it shocked me, and left the plot running over and over again in my head. I think it will be a very long time before the characters in this book begin to fade. This book has gone straight to the top of my ‘books everyone must read’ list. This isn’t because it is the best book in the world, but because it is so accessible to everyone, and is the most powerful anti-war message I’ve found.

Highly recommended, but have some tissues handy.

Categories
2000 - 2007 Recommended books

The Behaviour of Moths (The Sister) – Poppy Adams

The Behaviour of Moths is called The Sister in America, and I can see why there are two different titles, as there are two distinctive stories in the book. The first is the story of Ginny, an elderly lady who is reunited with her sister after 47 years apart. They struggle to revive their friendship, as we slowly learn the events which led to their separation all those years ago.

The story of the sisters is woven with Ginny’s fascination with her father’s work as a leading lepidoptorist, studying moth behaviour. I found the descriptions of moths completely fascinating. I never realised there was so much to learn about them. I found this particularly interesting:

“If you cut through a cocoon in mid-winter, a thick creamy liquid would spill out and nothing more. What goes into that cocoon in autumn is a caterpillar and what comes out in spring is entirely different: a moth, complete with papery wings, hair-like legs, and antennae. Yet this same creature spends winter as a grey-green liquid, a primordial soup.”

Poppy Adams clearly loves the natural world, and I hope she writes more about animal life in the future, as I think this is where her talents lie.

It’s not the best story in the world, but it is reasonably entertaining. I recommend you read it for the moth facts alone!

stars41

Categories
2000 - 2007 Richard and Judy Book Club

The Cellist of Sarajevo – Steven Galloway

The Cellist of Sarajevo is set during the siege of Sarajevo, which took place from April 5th, 1992 to February 29th, 1996, and is the longest city siege in modern warfare. The inspiration for the book came from the true story of a cellist who decided to play on the site of a mortar attack every day for three weeks, to honor his neighbours killed in the blast. While the book is fiction, it is based upon many true accounts of what life was like during the siege.

The book follows three main characters trying to live out their lives under constant fear of attack. The sights, sounds, and sheer terror of everyday life for these people was brought across very vividly. It was very well written and easy to follow, but I felt that the use of three different characters fragmentated the book too much. It wasn’t long enough to develop each of their characters fully, and so no real story could develop.

If you’d like to get a sense of what life was like for these people during the siege, then this is a great book to read, but I wish that it had been longer, and included more of a plot.

Categories
2000 - 2007 Booker Prize

Fasting, Feasting – Anita Desai

Fasting, Feasting was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 1999.

The book begins in India, telling the story of Uma, the eldest daughter of a close-knit family. Uma struggles to find a suitable husband, and becomes trapped at home, effectively a slave to her oppressive parents. Although set in a different continent, it reminded me of Purple Hibiscus. The character development was excellent, and all the sights and sounds of an Indian village came to life.

The second part of the book follows Uma’s brother, Arun, as he crosses the world to begin life with a middle-class family in America. Arun observes many of problems associated with the developed world, including materialism and eating disorders. I found this section of the book disappointing in comparison to the parts set in India. The characters failed to come to life, and I began to lose interest as this section progressed.

Many important issues were raised in this book, including arranged marriage and the effective imprisonment of women in a household. Comparisons between lives in the two different cultures were made, but no real conclusions were ever drawn.

Overall, the writing was simple, but beautiful. The book began well, but failed to develop to it’s full potential. It was OK, but nothing special.

Categories
2000 - 2007 Recommended books Richard and Judy Book Club

The Gargoyle – Andrew Davidson

I had heard lots of good things about The Gargoyle, and seen it on several people’s “Best of 2008” list, so was expecting great things. Perhaps I built my expectations up too much, as I was slightly disappointed.

The book follows the nameless narrator, as he recovers from severe burns after a car crash. His life is enriched when Marianne Engel, a mysterious sculptress of gargoyles, begins to visit him in the burns unit. Marianne claims to be a 700-year-old Medieval scribe, and she slowly reveals some of the events that she has witnessed over her long life.

I really enjoyed all the modern sections of the book. The thoughts of the burns victim were incredibly vivid, but were described in an almost comic way, so I was not disgusted by them:

Even when the skin did take, the absence of oil glands in the transplanted tissue resulted in extreme dryness. “Ants beneath the skin” is not only too cliched a description of how it felt, but also not graphic enough. Lumberjack termites brandishing little chainsaws, maybe; or a legion of fiddler crabs wearing hairshirts and fiberglass shoes; or a legion of baby rats dragging tiny barbed-wire plows. Tap-dancing, subepidermal cockroaches wearing soccer cleats and cowbuy spurs? Perhaps.

The book was very well researched, and I learnt a lot about the treatment of burns, schizophrenia and Medieval Germany. I also found Marianne’s character very interesting. I loved trying to work out whether or not she was schizophrenic, but I found that many of her tales seemed to drag on a bit. Although I realise their purpose in the story, I think that many of them could have been reduced in length, or removed completely. They interfered with the flow of the book, and made it overly long.

I enjoyed the ending of the book, it brought everything together, and rounded it all off nicely. Andrew Davidson is clearly a very skilled writer, and this is a great debut novel, but I think he tried to fit too many things into this book. I look forward to reading future books by him, as his imagination is wonderful!

Recommended for the vivid descriptions of life as a burns victim, and for re-enforcing the message that a person’s real beauty is underneath the skin, but be aware that fifty percent of the book is fairly average.

Also reviewed by Fresh Ink Books

Categories
2000 - 2007 Orange Prize

Digging to America – Anne Tyler

The book revolves around two very different families who, unable to have children of their own, adopt Korean baby girls. The families meet at the airport when the new babies arrive in America.

It is an interesting premise for a book, as the two families are very different, both in background, and their attitudes to bringing up children. The Iranian family immediately dress their new baby in jeans, while the American family acquire traditional Korean costumes and read her Korean folk stories. The book revolves around the ‘arrival day’ parties that the families throw each year to commemorate the day they were united with their babies.

There were lots of interesting subjects raised in the book, from national identity, and customs, to adoption and methods of childcare, but unfortunately they were not investigated in any depth. The characters were too numerous for us to generate any real feelings for them, and the plot failed to develop beyond the repetition of the party each year. By the end of the book I was very bored with it, and had lost count of the number of ‘arrival day’ parties that had occurred. The characters were well observed, but they were too ordinary, and nothing exciting happens to them during the course of the book. This could have been overcome by having an emotional insight into their lives, but unfortunately this failed to happen.

Overall, I was very disappointed in this book, and won’t be rushing out to read her others.