Stories from Tehran. 1979

Do not wish for a revolution...All those times of dramatic changes, when black turns to white and white turns to red, bloody red. Those times when breaking up is as deep as the wound of a sharp knife stuck into your heart. Those times when parents are no more parents and children are turning into judges of their parents. Please, do not pray for a revolution...

I´ve started to read Der Standhafte Papagei. Erinnerungen an Tehran 1979 shortly after my first book by Amir Hassan Cheheltan - which I´ve read in the German translation by Jutta Himmelreich. I acknowledged that this first encounter was fine, but far from being outstanding as the historical thread took over the story itself.

However, my second book of this author, who resides currently in Tehran, offered a completely different reading experience. Set as a succession of short stories, with characters maintained from an installment to the other, this book features the events and the people during the period preceding and during the installment of the Islamic Republic of Iran, 1978-1979. The political characters of the times, the Shah and his generals and the SAVAK (the terrible domestic secret service) are flipping in the front of the eyes of the residents of Tehran, who, themselves, are directly affected by the changes. Take for instance, Mr. Firuz, with his shop of alcoholic beverages is targeted by the revolutionaries, among which his own son. Plus a Papagei - parrot, in English - which is standhaft - unwavering, in English. The only one who doesn´t change its feathers during those times when tomorrow is such a faraway unknown journey.

When the Islamic Revolution took over Iran, Cheheltan was 22 and now, 40 years later, he was able to share its stories. Which is such a grateful experience, as it displays so many interesting human insights and accounts relevant for the very specific case of Iran as well as for understanding the impact of revolutions on everyday lives. 

Rating: 4 stars

Why the Americans?

Asking why Americans are killed in Iran, when innocent Iranians themselves are killed by the religious regime is a rhetorical question. Killing is motivated by hate, which becomes lethal when the motivation behind the act is based on religious self-righteousness.

Undertitled ´A novel about hate in 6 episodes´, Amerikaner töten in Tehran (Killing Americans in Tehran) by Amir Hassan Cheheltan (which I´ve read in the German translatiom from Persian by Susanne Baghestani and Kurt Scharf) is a story about serial killings of American citizens in Iran. Some are very important with high diplomatic and military rankings, some are simple people caught in the web of the political events that earthquaked Iran in the last century. 

There are around 60 years of history unfolding, through which individuals are trying to make their way, but some simply will not succeed. Because hate and misunderstanding is bigger than everything else (like love or mutual understanding, and tolerance).

The question: Why Americans and not...Russians or Armenians or...French...may have different answers. There is a forthcoming book that I have on my TBR for the next weeks - forthcoming in January 2021 - that may bring more light into my interpretation on the events: America and Iran: A History: 1720 to the Present, by John Ghazvinian. But even without reading this historical account, one may easily notice that Iran and America seems to love to hate each other. A fascination for young people looking to find their freedom out of the borders of the Islamic Republic and a hateful political partner, depending on the colour and mood of the successing American administrations (at least, Americans are offered the chance to change their ogre leadership while in Iran people are put to prison when they protest fake elections). 

But enough about politics, let´s talk about the book. Amerikaner töten in Tehran has actually a lot of politics and political history and sometimes it is hard to follow the literary construction which got lost into the folds of the facts. The book was written in Persian for a potential knowledgeable audience about, for instance, the Mossadegh story. I am personally fascinated about writing about historical events in a literary context but it´s always very hard to keep the right balance. In the case of this book, I´ve felt a couple of times completely absorbed in the facts as the literary events seem to be put on hold. 

Amir Hassanb Cheheltan lives in Tehran and is the recipient of several writing scholarships and residencies. He haven´t published in Iran for over a decade for reasons that has to do with the censorship and pressure on free minds that are so dangerous for this regime. 

Next on my reading list is another book of his, translated into German from Persian, an account of stories of everyday life during the 1979 Revolution, Der Standhafte Papagei. Looking forward to it.

Rating: 3 stars

Movie Review: Parasite by Bong Joon Ho

Another evening, another movie. Given how many evenings I survived without movies, the latest surge of interest has probably to do with a mixture between the long dark evenings and the inevitable long days at home due to Covid 19 restrictions. But watching movies is a smart and challenging way to spend your evenings so I better not complain at all.

Parasite is probably my first notable South-Korean movie I ever watched and one that I will remember for a long time. For once, I think Hollywood awards are really something, as the movie directed by Bong Joon Ho won the appreciation of the Oscar jury and it is not always a possible mission for the non-English movies. 

The movie is a black-and-sarcastic tragicomedy, featuring a poor family living in a basement in the suburbs that wants to be rich. Who doesn´t, actually? But in this case, they are actually scamming a naive, friendly and rich people. They lie about their academic credentials - so important in a country with over 90% of people with a high-ed degree - about their connections - they never share that they are family. Otherwise, they do their job well and are well paid and everything can continue until they got enough money to live happily ever after. 

Obviously, they will never be part of other class than the one they were born into and no matter how much they try, their smell betray them. This olfactive distinction between being privileged and being an outcast is so outstanding but, well, it says a lot about social and economic differences in this part of Asia. 

But the movie is far from a Cinderella story and the surprising, cruel, bloody ending is hunting - especially if you decided to watch the movie around midnight, as in the case of this not so wise writer.

Besides the story, the actors are playing very well with the class differences built through a genuine play between antinomic notions: clean and dirty, nonchalant and worrisome, chaos and order. Notions that towards the end are mixed up as the story itself is becoming more and more confusing and tensed.  The images do play an important role in the storytelling as well, with many interesting architectural details that complete the dialogues and the other technical features of the movie.

I´ve watched the movie on Prive Video with German subtitles.

Chasing the European Dream: The Cartography of Freedom

Some books need a lot of time to come together and they need a specific moment to be read. Some books are too realistic to make it into a work of literature. 

The creation of an EU as an institutional structure created not only a horizon of symbolic expectations but also the hopes for a better financial and economic situation. Citizens of countries with a lower income and a problematic social context were happy to use their European rights not only for the free travel opportunity but also for the chance of starting a new a better life.

In Cartography of Freedom - which I´ve read in the German translation Kartografie der Freiheit - the St.Petersburg-born Ukrainian author Andrej Kurkow is following the destiny of a couple of young Lithuanians searching for a better life in the ´old Europe´. I´ve read before the highly absurd and symbolic Death and the Penguin but this book is highly realistic and, in my opinion, a bit too long and lacking a clear red line and too many characters. Mid-story I was feeling that the stories will never end as the accounts of the different couples spread all over Europe are very slow paced and diary-like accounts. 

In parallel with the personal stories, there is the journey of the mythical Kukutis, the hero of a the Ballads of Kukutis, by the Lithuanian poet Marcelijus Martinaitis. Kukutis is the witness of the new realities of an Europe which maybe is too materialistic than the citizens on the Central and Eastern European lands expected to. 

As a book about Europeans and their dream, Kartografie der Freiheit is part of a new literature about topics that pertain to the post-Cold War realities. I was really interested in going through the whole book and like it, but I felt like both the story and the characters are lacking in consistency and the story itself was bigger than its planning and development. 

Rating: 3 stars

Movie Review: The Disappearance by Ali Asgari

There is a cruel sadness in many contemporary Iranian movies, especially when they include dramatic interactions between the oppression of the political system and the individual existence. My latest examples are the Oscar-winning A Separation and most recently Disappearance (Napadid Shodan) the debut film of Ali Asgari.

After her first physical contact with her boyfriend, a young woman needs to be hurried to a hospital. What is mostly a very simple procedure in the case of the young Iranian couple means a dramatic contact with the everyday realities of a regime that controls the bodies of its citizens, especially women. An unmarried woman is not allowed by the state to have an active sexual life. Of course young women in Iran do have boyfriends but the problems arise when they need specific medical care like in this case. Unless the couple is able to provide a marriage certificate she cannot be treated. Otherwise, the nurses threaten to call the (religious) police. A woman not accompanied by a man - father, husband - does not have rights, although is allowed to go to university or to work. But her power to decide her future and especially about her body is limited by the state.

The couple move from a hospital to another, in the middle of the night, until with the help of some friends, they are finding a doctor who is able to do the necessary procedure illegally, after being paid a hefty amount of money.

It is a slow motion movie, with the tension built from a stop to a hospital to another, through the silence of the couple. A mixture of silence, desperation, disappointment and, finally, disappearance. When virginity is a matter of high political interest the struggles of young people are significantly different from what we, in the free world, are used to experience. Hence, the lack of usual signs of public affection that we are used with, with the two young partners from The Disappearance not displaying any sign of empathy appropriate for the crisis they are going through. Public signs of affection are also a matter of state policies. However, the movie story also shows the value of friendship and solidarity that counters the religious opression. Friends are always there to help you and recommend you the right connection and one is not always left alone to face the absurdity of the system.

At a certain extent, the movie reminded me of the 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days by Cristian Mungiu, a Romanian film director that Asgari mentioned in an interview among his inspiration, alongside Michelangelo Antonioni and Frederico Felini. Asgari studied filmmaking in Italy and he is often a critic of censorship politics in Iran. 

The film, co-produced in Iran and Qatar, had the world premiere at the 74th Venice International Film Festival and was screened at the 2017 Toronto Film Festival. 

The Worst Hausfrau in the Whole World

 A good Feminist and a good Hausfrau never get together well...

No one talk easily about the amount of work a woman deals with - under the partner´s pressure or because no one to help - in the household. Especially a German household, where the Hausfrau projections continue to reflect a mentality from the 1930s when, we know well what was going on in Germany. 

Personally, until I´ve read the ironic daily accounts of not conforming to the high standards of the Hausfrau by Jacinta Nandi - Die schlechteste Hausfrau der Welt - I never worried about my low house cleaning skills. After all, when the cleanliness at home is going wrong, I don´t hesitate to use a paid hand or two, and if a man that happens to be my partner has some objections and is unable to correct it himself, I am happy to open largely the door to let him jump out of the stairs far away where women do keep themselves busy with obsessive cleaning. Most probably, if requested, I am also the worse Hausfrau in the whole world, except that I couldn´t care less. And a book about it couldn´t write because no love is bigger enough to accept haughty observations from a lazy human man while watching TV and sarcastically noticing his environment. 

Jacinta Nandi´s boyfriend though, although an educated professor, can´t stand a woman who doesn´t clean, clean, clean. No acknowledgements and recognition, as he is taking her for granted. With a little baby to take care of and a teenager in the house, with ideas in her head and projects to do, she is also overloaded by his obsessive requests for cleanliness and order. Love doesn´t pass through the stomach, but needs regularly to be cleaned with the mop. The right one, as there are mops and mops, assigned for each and every particular cleaning tasks. 

Nandi explores an aspect of a woman everyday life rarely deconstructed critically. With so many cleaning and decluttering influencers around the world, it´s intrinsically accepted to include the regular cleaning rituals into the daily routine of a woman. Besides children, cooking, and making money too, but often not as much as a man. No one wants to talk about it as a chore, hence the happy faces of the influencers who, by the way, may have at least one cleaning lady who are crystal cleaning their immaculate houses uses as a proof of perfection in their glamorous videos. 

Besides opening up serious wounds which deserve a larger discussion, especially about women perception in the German public and private space, Die schlechteste Hausfrau der Welt is written in a sarcastic (self)ironic vein which I love so much when it comes to everyday life topics. 

The book was recently published in the German language.

Disclaimer: I know the author through a common friend but the opinions are, as usual, my own.

Rating: 5 stars

Movie Review: Borat is back

What times are we living...And I am not talking about the pandemics, but about the overall global situation dominated by political characters that seem to be out of the Middle Ages bestiaries. No offense to the Middle Ages...

Photo: Amazon Prime

Borat the grotesque Kazakhstanian character is back on the screens. If you´ve followed Who is America which is actually a realistic view into what is America and who represents it, Borat 2 - released yesterday on Amazon Prime - is just a fictionalized version of a reality already unfolding. 

And this reality is an absurd mixture of vulgarity, nonsense and infatuation. Stupidity magnified at its highest levels. Plus a vulgarity which goes more than once far beyond any acceptability, but nothing really matters in a world where there is no distinction between good and evil, value and non-value.

Is this movie mostly about America? At a certain extent yes, but the outrageous irony is portraying an entire ´movement´ when people inform themselves from Facebook which turned in fact into a factory of falsehood and lies. Cohen, that produced the movie, was vocal in the last period of time against the social networks, particularly Facebook, accusing them of allowing the distoring of reality and promotion of ´fake news´. 

There is also a strong message about women and the way they are treated, not only in the imaginary Kazakhstan but also in the everyday America. But in order to seize this message one needs to be persistent enough to take out layer after layer of grotesque and nauseatic vulgarity. 

The absurdity embraces not only the story and its main events, but also the way in which the people are dressed and particularly their ways of talking. For instance, the Kazakhstan state representatives are talking in a perfect bureaucratic Romanian while Borat himself is conversing to the Slavic speaking daughter in a Russian-accented Hebrew. 

I cannot say that I really enjoy Borat 2, in the literally pleasant sense of the word, but I don´t regret watching it. In a sense, it was like watching a Facebook feed or some random selection of cable news around the world. 

Book Review: The Order by Daniel Silva

Another Daniel Silva book in a month? Yes, please...At least it´s a good price for ignoring his last year title. His newest, The Order deals with a different topic with a more historical component, but, as usual in Silva´s books, the past and the present are intertwined in a relevant message to the future.

The Order brings the legendary Israeli spy master Gabriel Allon in the middle of a terrific world conspiracy built around an apocryphal gospel - Gospel of Pilate - that may challenge the current interpretation of Christianism, especially towards the Jews. But there is an old secretive religious order that does not want this document public and was ready to go as far as to kill the pope.

Allon, on vacation with his family in his wife´s hometown of Venice, is ready to put into motion all his available resources, as chief of the Mossad, to counter the ancient anti-semitic hatred. But, as usual as in the books authored by Silva from the series - that reached no. 20 as for now - there is more into the story than a good versus evil narrative. My favorite part of reading this interesting and well informed author is to catch up the global narrative and his art of putting things in a long-term perspective. In The Order, he uses the current global circumstances for inserting his characters and their fast forward actions. We are faced with the raise of populism, anti-semitism and islamophobia. All those are going hand in hand, based on an ideology with deep roots into the European history and culture.

I had the book in audiobook format, read by the world acclaimed George Guidall but personally I was not in awe about the interpretation. As I will keep expanding my experience with audiobooks, most probably will have soon new experiences with this narrator and I can thus have a complete picture of his skills and of the skills of a successful story-reader as well.

Rating: 4 stars

Coming-Out Book Review: How it All Blew Up by Arvin Ahmadi

´But I didn´t want to be that kid anymore. I didn´t want to be my parents´ baby forever, cute and innocent and harmless. I didn´t want to be their toddler, the one who tripped and hiccupped and made everyone laugh´.

A teenager growing up in an Iranian-American family in America, Amir is gay. He is sure about that but he is afraid of sharing his truth with his family. Not necessarily extremely religious but culturally conservative, his parents already expressed their opposition to gay identity and Amir is sure his coming-out story would break him for his family. 

Amir belongs to a new generation that does not problematize his sexual, cultural and religious identity. He can be all of them at once, and it´s only a matter of context to be accepted as such by the others. Due to an unusual turn of events, he decides to run away from America to Rome, inspired by a gelato stand he´ve seen at the airport. An escape that will change his life and will not only make him brave enough to accept his identity, but also to openly talk about this to his parents. The only problem that this revelation took place in an airplane on the way back to America and they will end up being interrogated as non-American trouble makers.

Maybe I can say that I´ve read more complex coming out stories, especially with a multicultural touch, what I´ve liked about this book is intertwined stories: the accounts of the events before and during the escape to Rome, intercalated to fragments from the police interrogation.

How it All Blew Up is a short yet pleasant read, as well as insightful about the struggles about coming out and why mutual acceptance of an identity (sexual, cultural, religious) is so important in the family as well as in the society.  

Rating: 3 stars

Book Review: The Lady from Tel Aviv by Raba´i al-Madhoun

I keep expanding my understanding and knowledge about authors and topics pertaining to the Middle East issues, but my advance is often pursued with precaution. As much as I love to be back - on way on the words and not airplanes because we are in 2020 after all - in my favorite places on Earth, I am also aware that writing is not innocent and I want to keep myself away from the toxicity of biased creativity. Against the Loveless World for instance, such a great wording and monomanic bias. Such a far cry from Sayed Kashua who has a strong voice not hampered by hate. 

The Lady from Tel Aviv is the debut novel of the British-based journalist Raba´i al-Madhoun, who grew up in a refugee camp in the Gaza Strip. The main character of the book, the journalist Walid Dahman, come back to visit his mother and extended relatives after 38 years of absence from the land. During his 21-day trip he is aiming to collect the fragments of his past, but things changed not only politically but non-surprisingly, from the point of view of the human relations too. Old friendships are challenged by political options, promising futures were broken and even the family connections themselves cannot resist the test of the dramatic political and ideological changes of the last decades. 

´Our family now kills and is killed. What kind of family is this that I´ve come back to?´

On his way to Ben Gurion Airport from London, Walid met in the plane an Israeli woman who was returning home broken hearted, because his Ukrainian Jewish boyfriend couldn´t live any longer in Israel. She will randomly send him emails including one to confess her experience during the Army service in Gaza and him being the only Palestinian she actually ever talked with. They will maybe meet later in London, when Walid is back home.

The strongest point of the book resides in long length descriptions and human observations. There is also bias and predictable assumptions but in an elegant less militant articulated way. But overall, there is the permanent condition of randomness in a world with a murky future. And this reality is no more a question of debating who´s guilty and who´s not.

Rating: 2.5 stars

Movies with a Literary and Historical Touch

I am such a lazy movie watcher...Ever since I´ve temporarily cancelled my Netflix subscription - simply for time-related reasons - I´ve rarely been in the mood for a movie. And feeling very guilty about it. However, in the weeks of the last two months, I did my best to watch some good movies, few inspired by books I´ve liked once. Maybe it´s just a beginning for watching more...and more...And writing about it too...(Writing about movies is another writing challenge of mine for this strange year).

The Portrait of Dorian Gray directed by Oliver Parker convenes perfectly the Goth ambiance of Oscar Wilde´s writing. The curse of the permanent beauty and the easiness of corrupting the good human nature and turning it into a monster is translated into complex close ups and sophisticated interiors. Dorian Gray is very good played by Ben Barnes, but the other characters from the book/movie who are committed to pervert Dorian´s original good nature simply because they cannot stand his naive goodness, are equally important. It´s a strong game of strong characters which may look somber and heavy sometimes, but overall it is a good movie to watch.

Even though there were a couple of historical and factic objections about Selma, directed by Ava duVernay, the first black woman who won an award at Sundance Film Festival, the movie is really good played. It is inspired by the 1965 Selma to Montgomery voting right marches lead, among others, by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and was fully released on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the events. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. is played by the very talented British-American actor David Oyelowo, which make it an unforgettable movie character. My favorite actor and character is Dr.´s wife, Coretta Scott King, played by the English TV actress Carmen Ejogo, who is the stronger character, the wife wisely supporting her husband, no matter his weaknesses and betrayals. Big historical figures do have weaknesses too. 

Although maybe there are a lot of historical inaccuracies about this movie, it was a good decision to watch it, particularly in a year when Black Lives Matter movement turned in such a dramatic direction.

From the world of big historical figures and unforgettable literary characters, to the everyday life of everyday people. La graine et le mulet (translated into German blandly as Couscous mit Fisch) by the French-Tunesian film director is about the challenges and hardships of a Tunesian family in France. And, of course, their love for a well-cooked couscous a meal which has such a high community values because it brings all the members of the family together. Nothing philosophical about this movie, just simple lives and this is what I really loved about it.

Drum rolls...many many drum rolls for...The History of Love, based on a novel by Nicole Krauss and directed by the fantastic Radu Mihaileanu. The meeting between Mihaileanu visual storytelling skills and Nicole Krauss love for words is extraordinary. Maybe the actors are not always playing their best, but all together they really convene the big human question: How love lasts? How love is getting lost? I have no idea what the possible answers are yet...

Book Review: Free Food for Millionaires by Min Jin Lee

The more I read about immigrant stories the more I see the similarities: first generations working hard for their children to apply as doctors, lawyers and engineers at top universities in their home countries; young generation forced or willinging fighting to maintain their identity, emancipated and not necessarily interested in the family achievements their parents are expecting from them. The beauty of a book based on those experiences and generational shifts resides in the way in which those stories are told.

As I was browsing for an audiobook, I´ve remember how much I loved Pachinko, one of the best books I´ve read in 2017, by Min Jin Lee and decided to give it a try to her debut novel Free Food for Millionaires. 

I had the book in audioformat in the very entertaining reading by Shelly Frasier which makes a big difference. You need an involved reader and special voice to keep yourself focused on an audiobook and Frasier succeeds at a very great extent, particularly given the considerable length of the book - translated into 19 audio-hours.

Telling the story of multi-generational Korean immigrants, with a special focus on women, Free Food for Millionaire is like a story that never ends. Slow paced and populated with women character stubborn to live their life according to their rules. Even family conventions and the dued respect towards elders, particularly one own´s parents, are not enough for breaking their own path - both personal and professional. 

The characters, most of them living in NYC, are easy to visualise, through their everyday interactions and life schedule. Most of them - especially the second generation - are highly educated to top American universities, working on Wall Street or dreaming to work there one day. And there is Cassey, a young 20 something, whose friendships are non-negotiable and a passion for hat making and classic English literature. Maybe ´passion´ is not necessarily the right word, as she is cool and lacking any passional outburst, but this also has to do with her upbringing and her family environment (which does not apply only to Asian/Korean immigrant families). But Cassey dreams of love that lasts for ever, and she feels attracted to white guys, a personal taste that costed her the temporary alienation from her family.

All women in the book are critically evaluating their relationships where love is not always the first choice. It goes to Cassey´s mother too, who at 43 is pregnant with the child of a man that abused her innocent approach to relationships. There are man betraying their wives and being left because there is no excuse for betrayal. But there are also women, like Cassey, betraying his boyfriend because she just don´t feel right about relationship and innocently sharing the fact with him. This complex undoing and redoing of relationships I´ve found very interesting, as it recontextualizes customs and cultural mindsets into perfectly modern life settings.

The writing flows beautifully and is almost as perfect as in Pachinko, and there are relatively complex characters and situations created but more than half into the story one may feel that the story is not heading anywhere and will never do. This is the author´s choice although the rich descriptive - modern chronicle like part may be considered a bit redundant. 

Min Jin Lee is a great storyteller and I can only hope that her next book will be soon out. No matter what topic it will approach, I will make sure to read it. 

Rating: 3.5 stars

Est-Ouest: A Graphic Novel about Intellectual Ideas and Cold War Politics

I love French graphic novels, not only because - obviously - I prefer French to any other language, but also because, as in the case of literature in general, some may have a great intellectual touch. How can I resist to wander my mind back into the world of ideas and intellectual debates, although convened in an illustrated way?

Designed initially as a road-trip graphic novel, from the East to the West coast of the USA into the deep frozen lands of the Cold War, Est-Ouest by Pierre Christin and Philippe Aymond is equally a short history of complex ideas. Through beautiful graphics and short yet meaningful texts, this work of graphic is first and foremost a chronicle. It documents movements, contexts and ideas, like the Hippy fake-revolution, the post-war America and the conflicts between the different leftist orientation in the boiling 1968 Paris. A Sorbonne-trained academic in ScPo, Christian has also the legerity of the artist and the spontaneous creativity inspired probably by the jazz rhymes he loves.

I liked the travelogue part of the book through the Iron Curtain, from the East Berlin to Bulgaria, and it not only respects facts and situations, but it shows a basic understanding of the everyday life in those times - from the food shortages to the difficulties of finding the latest books published in the West, as well as the everyday life of fear and surveillance, particularly in Romania. 

East-Ouest is not an easy book and one could easily use it as an additional lecture for political science classes. There will always be conflicts and misunderstandings and political tensions and not forgetting them is a way of learning from mistakes. 

Rating: 4 stars

The Horror of First Dates: A Fantastic Thriller by Sue Watson

 Let´s talk first dates. Or better not. Even the fourth and fifth are not fine. Dating nowadays can turn in such a bad joke but still, not all dates are ending up as thrillers´ material. Hopefully. 

First Date by Sue Watson is a book like no other I´ve read this year. It started so slowly paced and in a sugary romantic kind of way but ends in a terrific way. 

Hannah is a social worker, still looking for the one, and with the help of a dating up she is ready for a start. There she meets Alex, a promising solicitor with whom she matches almost perfectly. A dream coming true so fast. However, there are a lot of red flags, a bit too obvious spread across the first part of the story - which involves Hannah´s blind love and desire to finally find a home and a family. Growing up in foster families she is longing for stability and a home nest. Alex, which also have a history of family dislocation, seems to be everything, until she start discovering shocking things about him. As for instance, that he is married - but in process of divorcing. Or, that he is literally following her day and night, including by poping-up ´by surprise´ in places where she was supposed to meet her co-workers and friends. And strange things are about to happen, like when she received beautiful roses with a card with threatening message attached. 

Blindfolded by love, she gives him a chance, and another one, and another one. Until there is no way out of this and she runs away of the rented cottage in Devon, after he is revealed as the murderer of an innocent drunk bloke that flirted with her in a bar. 

And he killed himself. But although there are so much lies in Alex´s lifestory, enough to make it into a perfect thriller story, the ending is terrific as, he is not the only one longing for Hannah´s attention. This time, is even more psychotic.

How hard was it to put down this read! I´ve hardly resisted the temptation of reading it without any break this weekend - blame the beautiful autumn days for the interruptions - and was happy for the bookish company. Although I was not always happy with the weaknesses of Hannah - after all, I have a completely different dating style and expectations - there is so much suspense to this book built slowly through a combination of story structure and characters development.

Rating: 3.5 stars

Disclaimer: Book offered by the publisher in exchange for an honest review

Book Review: The Wonder by Emma Donoghue

Some writers are perfect when it comes to writing skills, but the ways in which a story is built is not always satisfactory. At least, for my taste in books. In a way, a really hate it to be so much into the book until the very last few pages when everything ends up too abruptly or in a way that does not balance the fantastic previous developments. It is a realm of expectations that is broken and, as a passionate reader, you feel betrayed.

It happened to me at a great extent in the case of Room by Emma Donoghue, and at a smaller rate with The Wonder, by the same author. 

The Wonder is a fascinating read, as it explores the willing food deprivation of a teenage girl in the Irish Midlands at the end of the 19th century. Based on an occurrence of similar cases recorded at the time, it focuses on the conflicts between science and religion and the ways in which religion can distort and pervert a young child´s perception.

Anna O´Donnell is supposed to have been fasted for four months and a a team of ´experts´ is supposed to watch her day and night in order to oversee the reliability of the situation. A nurse, Lib, is watching her day and night switching shifts with a nun. During the interactions with the girl, Lib is going through an intellectual transformation as she is critically considering the limitations and distorsions brought by religion. Although not a believer herself, and not a Catholic as the Irish majority, Lib is able to go beyond the limitations of upbringing and belief in order to let prevail the humanity of us all. 

The story is developped step-by-step in a slightly suspenseful way. I´ve felt a couple of times that the dialogues and the language were out-of-time or at least not pertaining to the 19th century when the story is placed which is a disadvantage when you call your novel ´historical´. What was brilliantly realized though was the reconstruction of the deceiving religious vocabulary which can hid so well abuse and manipulation. The dangerous exposure of a little child abused sexually to all the religious brainwashing is out-of-time and applies unfortunatelly to more than one religion followers. 

As for the ending, it took place way too fast and too unexpectedly. The surprise was welcomed and interesting, but the way in which it was instrumented not so. I felt like I was invited in a home and kept warm for a while being told beautiful stories as to be rushed suddenly to the exit without no further warning.

But I really enjoyed the time spent reading and this was enough to go beyond my short disappointment.

Rating: 3 stars