Random Things Tours: Class. A Graphic Guide

 

I love graphic novels and I can spend hours reading one of the other. Curiously, my passion for this genre did not started, as it usually happens, in my childhood, but it is relatively a late addition to my bookish life, part of my own journey of expanding beyond the limits of my strict humanistic education and background. Shortly, graphic novel deserve the same appreciation as any other published book, the only condition being to offer a quality content.

As before I was interested in politics and history, I was considering following a career in sociology - following my pen on paper read of the works of Durkheim - I maintain a certain degree of interest for new theories and approaches. But Class. A Graphic Guide, by University of Brighton sociologists Laura Harvey and Sarah Leaney, admirably illustrated by Danny Noble, offers a completely new innovative level of sharing theoretical, scientifically-related knowledge. It goes definitely beyond the usual expectations of an academic content and sociological overview of the category of class, with an inspired match of illustrations and content.

An useful tool to be used in the classroom - both high-school and in the sociology introductory classes, this graphic novel is more than a historical account of the category of class. It offers also short yet clear explanations about the various contextualizations and interpretations of the class, according to different theories and historical moments. 

Class. A Graphic Guide is an innovative approach to sociological theory therefore reaching out to different audiences than the usual classrooms. I am looking forward to discover more creative takes on political, economic and sociological theories. 

Rating: 5 stars

Disclaimer: Book offered as part of the book tour but the opinions are, as usual, my own

Rachel´s Random Resources: Gerard Philey´s Euro-Diary by Brendan James

Some believe the superstition that what you are doing in the first day of the year will describe the rest of the year. From his rented room in the West Midlands , Gerard Philey is dreaming about a different life. Will it be 1995 his year of discoveries?

As at the time, the UK was a proud EU member, it was much easier to dream about spending a year abroad, getting to know what life in Europe really means. Gerard Philey´s Euro-Diary: Quest for a Life by Brendan James is a detailed diary of those experiences, which succeed in a spectacular, oftenly hilarious manner.

During his ´study-leave´ that started in Brussels, in ended up being the manager of a sex shop, country hopping, spending weekends in Germany or Prague. One may say that´s the feeling of living in Europe that makes possible to get in touch with so many people from all over the world, within a couple of hours, by train or by car. 

The story is humorous, hilarious and suits very well the ambiance of the cities it is located. It has a fast and entertaining pace and therefore, the end may take you by surprise, even though it takes place exactly at the end of European adventures. Only that you may want to continue at least for another year.

If you are looking for an easy and entertaining read this weekend or for the rest of your summer holidays, this book is a good recommendation. 

Rating: 3.5 stars

Disclaimer: Book offered as part of the book tour but the opinions are, as usual, my own  

Short Religious Thriller Story: Soldiers of God by J.F. Penn

 

For those who waited a bit too long the new adventures in the realm of religious thriller alongside the courageous employees of ARKANE - The Arkane Religious Knowledge and Numinous Experience Institute - the very knowledgeable and talented J.F.Penn just wrote a short story inspired by the series.

Although less than 50-page long, Soldiers of God convenes the spirit and the thrilling ambiance of the usual stories featured in the series. A mysterious document is found by one of the employees of the institute in Vatican, while setting up the details of an AI-enhanced search engine for the Catholic Church, aimed at scanning important old documents. The document trace down an old secret of the Templars whose whereabout are resting in a secret hiding under the streets of Paris. Resting as in taking a nap, but their role in an incoming story can only be guessed as for now.

With her unique art to create suspense while sharing well-researched information about old rituals and religious practices, J.F.Penn takes the reader into a journey where dangers do have a lifethreatening disruptiveness. Although in the case of Soldiers of God, after proving the veracity of the facts described in the document, there is no crime or kidnapping happening, one can feel the mysterious dangers in the air. 

I just hope it will not take too long until a new Arkane book will be ready. I miss already the challenges, action and the intricate centuries old stories. 

Rating: 5 stars

Disclaimer: Book offered by the author in exchange for an honest review but the opinions are, as usual, my own

Book Review: The Guest Room by Chris Bohjalian

My first encounter with acclaimed crime writer Chris Bohjalian, The Guest Room raises important questions about sex workers and modern-day slavery but often this theoretical aspect takes hold on the story construction and development.

Definitely, approaching the topic of sex workers requires a lot of empathy and practical knowledge about how it does operate at both an individual and global - network-bounded level. Alexandra, a young Armenian-born girl, was kidnapped and brought to Moscow when she was in her early teens. Used as a sex slave for the pleasure and benefit of the oligarchs, together with other girls she arrives to America where she was hired to strip for a bachelor party. When the party goes bloody wrong, and one girl and a bodyguard are killed, the everyday life of those who hosted and participated at the party are traumatically changed. Richard, the brother of the groom-to-be is particularly affected as he hosted the debauche and got entangled with Alexandra. The chain of events is a test of trust for his marriage but also reveals the dark sides of his fellows participants as Alexandra is caught into the race for saving her life.

Bohjalian, born from an Armenian father whose parents survived the genocide, introduces a lot of historical details as the background story, particularly during and after the last years of the Soviet Union. The wise insights into the circumstances a woman/a girl can end up as a sexworker, against her will, may bring more empathy and understanding into the topic.

However, from the story-telling point of view, the story of The Guest Room is simplistically linear, without paying too much attention to the other characters and lacking memorable narrative twists. The comparison between Alexandra´s painful teenage years and Melissa´s, Richard´s daughter first steps out of childhood, has a potential to be eventually developed that haven´t lead too far.

I am glad I finally had the chance to discover Bohjalian but I hope there are much better books by him. On the other hand, the storyfied information about sex workers is noteworthy and good to keep in mind empathically when reading or talking about the topic.

Rating: 3 stars

Book Review: The Wives by Tarryn Fisher

 ´Close your eyes, Thursday. See it again, as it really way´.

Thursday, the storyteller of The Wives by Tarryn Fisher is apparently part of a polygamist triangle with other two women. She is the ´official´ wife, while one is a former and the other the newest and youngest acquisition, pregnant with Seth´s child. But as we are advancing through the story, from a relativey slow start, focused on explaining the distribution of roles between the three, based on the days of the week the husband is visiting them and other details of the relationship dynamics, we are suddenly brought into a grey zone of doubt and suspense: should we really believe Thursday?

´I remember thinking how fragile we were as humans, souls covered in tender flesh and brittle bone; one wrong step and we became someone else entirely´.

From one paragraph to another, you get more and more confused. Is there anything Thursday herself is hiding? Does she tell the truth? Is she indeed seriously mentally disturbed in order to deserve being placed in a mental institution? What about the ´wives´?

Thus, from one eventful polygamist story we are smoothly transitioning towards a suspenseful psychological thriller with a special focus on (women) mental health. After all, I was thinking, mostly unrelated to the story, are men so easily and fast accepted into a mental health facility and threated as irresponsible adults? But this is just my random spin which does not necessarily have anything to do with the topic of the book.

Although equally interesting, the game of the smoked mirrors confusing the reader, finelly played, is however not completely and, in my opinion, in a very moderate way. I would have liked more radical connections and even more shocking twists, but maybe it was because I was on vacation and my brain was missing the everyday dosis of work-infused adrenaline. 

I would love to explore more books by Fisher as for sure I enjoyed her style and brutal exploring of deceiving and mental fragility.

Rating: 3.5 stars  

Rachel´s Random Resources: Dreams in a Jar by Kate Staves, illustrated by Karen Bunting

 

One of the saddest things that are happening once we are growing up is that we forget to keep our dreams alive. And I am not talking here about the big dreams, when one is setting for him- or herself the aim of being a doctor, or living in a castle and many more, but just about those everyday dreams, when we are acting on a pirate ship one night while swimming with mermaids in the other.

The curious girl character from Dreams in a Jar eventually found the remedy against forgetfullness: she keeps fragments of the dream in a jar under her bed. Thus, she keeps dreaming, collecting memories that are sealed in the jar as she is busy gathering more memories. 

The rhymes are simple yet convening the important meanings for both children and adults. If you read it as an adult, it may bring back memories of those days when there was not tomorrow, just day and the dreams. For children, it resonates with their everyday daydreaming and their colourful vivid life. 

Dreams in a Jar can be used as a good night story for dreamy pre-school children, but also in Kindergarten, while trying to discuss with the little ones, for instance, what they would love to have in their jar of dreams. 

But what would be a children book without illustrations? My 7yo son released a couple of genuine loud ´wow´s upon following the artwork created for this book by Karen Bunting. The pictures build the bridges with the text in a dreamlike way, and one may need to read this book more than once.

A recommended book to everyone who will not give up daydreaming, no matter the age.

Rating: 5 stars

Disclaimer: Book offered as part of the book tour but the opinions are, as usual, my own

Random Things Tours: Better the Blood by Michael Bennett

 

A novel set in Auckland, featuring Māori detective Hana Westerman, Better the Blood by Michael Bennett is an unexpected crime novel, and not only for featuring a culture rarely present in the literary realm of any kind. Based on a story that took place 160 years before our current times, it wraps a mystery into the mundane reality but in a dynamic way that leaves place for innovative writing and an appealing story line.

Māori detective Hana Westerman received an email that may lead her to discover a recently committed murder. But when she is again in the loop for being notified about something terrible that it is about to happen she realized that there is no coincidence and thus, she should make a journey into her own past, as a fresh police officer involved in being an agent of repression against her own people. Indeed, the association in not fortuite and it adds a significant colonial take to the story.

Better the Blood is a multi-faceted story, with a complex intersectionalist take. The characters do reflect more than one layer of reality. For instance, Hana is a single mother, Māori, a rebel daughter, clashing with her daughter Addison, with a more independent take on identity and a different way to value herself than her mother when was her age. 

These aspects, in addition to the equally captivating and smart story makes the book an irresistible read. I took the advantage of being on vacation for reading it in one long sitting. For me, it was the best way to grasp all of the different directions of the story and the layers of the plot, as well as to research the cultural aspects I related to the Māori culture I was not at all aware about.

Rating: 4.5 stars

Disclaimer: Book offered as part of the book tour but the opinions are, as usual, my own 

Book Review: Jägerin und Sammlerin by Lana Lux

 

Jägerin und Sammlerin - in my translation She-Hunter and She-Gatherer - by Lana Lux is one of the few articulated novels on the concomitent topics of mental health, eating disorders and Jewish immigration from the former Soviet Union. 

Alisa moved to Germany from Ukraine, part of the so-called ´contingent immigrants´ - with her mother and father when she was 3 years old. Caught between the challenges of the new life, the ambitions and relatively lack of empathy of her mother, and the teenage years, Alisa will soon collapse in the open arms of the eating disorder. After years of fighting the demons of the sickness she will start a long-term therapy and will burn the bridges between her and her mother, Tanya. The story continues to the version of Tanya´s story, a switch which gives more complexity to the narrative and balances the story that until then was exclusively centered on the girl´s version. Thus, the roots of the problem are expanded and explained in a complex way. 

Personally, I devoured this book during my current holidays. It is well written, it reproduces the voices of the two women with the nuances and complexities of the age and experience, and first and foremost is sheds light on the various voices of the eating disorder, an old acquintance of mine. The voices and the personalities of the two main characters are very clear and carefully built, and so is the conflict between generations and the (eternal) mother-daughter clash.  

Although not unusual among Jews coming from the former Soviet Union that happened to meet during my time in Germany, the Jewish identity although stated does not have any content besides being nominalla acknowledged. 

There are elements of the author´s identity that are used in the constructions of the book. Herself she is originally from Ukraine, arrived to Germany as a child, part of the ´contingent´, the page she is managing, of cartoons on topics of mental health - @eva_and_her_demons etc. Those elements however do not diminish the originality or the pertinence of the topic.

I was impressed by the complex take on eating disorder put in the context of the inter-generational narrative. It is a rare yet necessary literary background which reaches out far beyond the literature, in the everyday life of someone dealing with such serious issues. I loved the writing and the choice of the characters as well as the idea of the title, which finelly delineates the distinction between the mother and the daughter. 

I already ordered another book by Lux and I just hope to discover more Jewish voices of her literary generation that may fill the (mis)understanding gap I´ve encountered in Germany when it comes to people with a similar background to Lux´s.

Rating: 4 stars

Book Review: The Union of Synchronized Swimmers by Cristina Sandu - translated by Cristina Sandu

 

In six different parts of the world, six women are starting anew. Former swimming champions in an unnamed Soviet country, they chose freedom. But what it is this freedom about? Will they be ever be able to regain their prestige, although they gained the freedom.

In a smooth, non-ideological way, story-centered short novel, Cristina Sandu´s The Union of Synchronized Swimmers translated into English by the author herself, is predominantly a women narrative about a before and after deciding to leave the country on the wrong side of the Iron Curtain. It is inspired by a story of swimmers who escaped from the then Soviet Russia.

In synchron, the six separate stories are immigration stories of women. Women who may have been able to have everything back home, but refusing to adapt to the everyday limitations. But what does expect them on the other side? How would they deal with their new life? Ar they prepared for it?

In fact, I think someone who wants to be free will just follow the freedom aim and leave everything behind just for breathing freedom and nothing else. The rest is irrelevant and those who did this choice know so well how important is to follow your freedom instincts. 

I personally loved the prose, both in terms of tone and of poetic potential. It is interesting that the author herself is the translator of her own words, which in my opinion may imply definitely a certain degree of re-writing, more than the one requested by a simple, neutral translation.

Cristina Sandu is a multi-lingual writer currently based in the UK, from a Romanian-Finnish family from Finnland. The Union of Synchronized Swimmers is her first book published in English.

Rating: 4 stars

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

No one who chose freedom 

The Secrets of The Happy Inbox

 

My Inbox is rarely having less than 20 ´unread´ messages. All round the clock I am regularly bombarded with news of all kinds, from highly emergency clients, rescheduled meetings or some unexpected friendly mail from friends I haven´t been in touch for years. At the same time, my WhatsApp is rarely sleeping, as my contacts are spread all over the world, operating mostly - as I do - on a full schedule. My secret to ´normality´ is being multi-tasking and over-active therefore, answering various requests or formulating myself some is never exhausting. It is part of my everyday pace.

However, I know that my personal life is suffering sometimes, I don´t remember how many times my son mentioned that I am with my head deep into my phone - for a few seconds though, that for him feel like hours. In any case, I need a better time management not in the detriment of my personal life, but by finding ways to save it. For instance, feeling self-aware - of indifferent, depending of your priority lists - enough to refuse answering that client who is bombarding me with various kind of rhetorical requests between 7am and 10 am on a holy Saturday morning...

Thus, my interest for a book like The Happy Inbox. How to Have a Stress-Free Relationship with your Email and Overcome your Communication Clutter by motivational speaker and productivity expert Maura Thomas. 

The book is short and concise, therefore can be easily read in-between commuting or while waiting a late meeting to (finally) start. It has important tips about how to set up filters that may automatically select the important from the non-important emails. It also recommends, among others, using a separate email for newsletters and other time-consuming messages that can be read in your spare time as well. 

More than a time management tool for your inbox, it does recommend also a couple of measures to be taken while preparing a meeting, including by trying to get to know the participants and their eventual mindset, and also being ready for the delays or how to further send information to the absent members of the team.

Personally, I would have expect more focus on the emails only, including by mentioning the pros and cons of using various emails - Yahoo vs. Google etc. - or a step-by-step guide about how to actually organise your time in a way that avoids getting overloaded and in the end, burned out. However, for a medium cluttered email and a mild overburned hard working employee or freelancer, the book do include enough tips to get you started into the next steps of a better work-life balance.

Rating: 3.5 stars

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

Book Review: Several People are Typing by Calvin Kasulke

 

I am fascinated by books set in new e-environments, trying to feature out now working and daily habits, including in communication, shaped by the technologies used on a daily basis. 

Several People are Typing by Calvin Kasulke is set in a Slack-driven environment, regularly used - for all the possible reasons - by the employees of a PR company based in NYC. I am currently using Slack on a daily basis for one of my main projects therefore was interested to explore a bit how far imagination can navigate in this space.

The idea of Slack is to create a kind of digital office, a function which serves very well the work from home new post-Covid generation. I am mostly home based but permanently in touch with clients from all over the world long before the new trends became predominant therefore there are not so many surprising details about those systems. Was only waiting for the literary rendition of it.

The employees in Several People are Typing are average before becoming extemely weird. The system itself, and its bots, it´s taking over too. In this punk chaos we hardly know which is real and which is a functionality of the system. Workers in virtual realities do look like words without bodies. Do behave like ones. I don´t remember when was the last time when I had a normal office, working and talking together with real people during my work. 

The more we advance in the book the more chaotic the emoticon-heavy conversation turns. There is nothing necessarily of importance in those conversations, only an escalation of an already artificious mindset. 

I would have expected a much more creativity in dealing with this topic. There is so much to explore in this direction and although there is a kind of sex-romance taking place in the private chats created within the Slack system, there is nothing really interesting in terms of intellectual challenges. It looks like the author just left everything go in the direction of his creative impulse without trying to create more tension and expand the action. This is the curse and the blessing of being the first of approaching a specific new topic.

I had too many expectations from this book and as usual, I was highly disappointed, but I am sure the day will come when Slack or any other virtual office will inspire a great story to be told and re-told.

Rating: 2 stars

Random Things Tours: The Last White Man by Mohsin Hamid

 

In a mildy kafkaesque scenario that evolves slowly into a rioting episode which reminds of Blindness by Saramago, Anders, the character of Mohsin Hamid´s latest book The Last White Man wakes up one morning as a brown person. 

First, he is shocked, experiences disturbing physical sensations as he repeatedly looks himself into the mirror. He is hiding from his work colleagues. He is trying to figure out if he is contagious or not - reminiscences of our new Covid-inspired vocabulary. No one recognize him on the street. Yet, he is seen as a brown person and this kind of attention is unusual for Anders. His girlfriend, Oona is that kind of yoga instructor that meditates in the morning and is devoted to her middle class priviledged lifestyle. She is the caregiver of her mother which sounds sometimes like your average QAnon (potential) follower. 

Inspired by the racial profiling he witnesses after 11/9, Hamid´s book keeps his feet in the fantasy as in Exit West, but in a more story-focused way, although the frame is fantastic and dystopic. There are a lot of ironic references and the characters do behave ridiculously and capitalistically wrong. It is a world of the mind that nevertheless sounds as absurd as our everyday political reality, in America and abroad. 

The Last White Man is a fictional representation of an utopic post-racial world. A short novel, that does not read as easy and this is not only because of the very extensively and complex built sentences. But it is a fascinating interpretation which adds a different view on race, particularly the growing literary bibliography on race from the last decade.

Rating: 4 stars

Disclaimer: Book offered as part of the book tour but the opinions are, as usual, my own 

An Awake Child(hood)

 

Son of an officer in the Army of the Shah, SAID - Said Mirhadi by his legal name - left Iran at 17 in order to learn in Germany. Returning home only for a short time, after the installment of the new regime, he built up a prestigious literary career as a poet and writer, being the first non German director of PEN-Zentrum Deutschland between 2000 and 2002. 

His memoir - a succession of short stanzas - ein vibrierendes kind - in my approximate translation, An Awake Child - was published after his death, last year, from a heart attack. The multi-awarded poet evokes his childhood in Iran, the female relatives substituting his mother that died in childbirth, his father, his school friends - including through interaction with his Jewish and Armenian neighbours. It is an evokative yet emotionally balanced account. He identifies himself as ´the child´. By using the third person there is a certain distance the author takes from his own memories, which even it may not work as such in reality, literarily speaking it creates a different biographical interpretation. Thus, it builds up the bridge between a personal account and a memoir which serves more than as a counter against forgetting, but shares an unique experience belonging to a timeframe. 

The language is clear and poetically suggestive. A testimony of a life broke by historical occurrences. What could it be more heartbreaking than being unable to re-visit the world of your literary dreams, which inspires your writing?

Rating: 5 stars

Random Things Tours: Chinese-ish by Rosheen Kaul and Joanna Hu

 

Chinese food is underrated. Reduced to the level of an ´exotic´ and cheap, eventually oily, ´fast food´ it is rather avoided - as per the high ´healthy´ standards of European diet and expected to be...cheap, oily and predictable. Oh, how I pitty those who never had the chance to take a bit of a Peking roast duck! We need more authentic Chinese food stories, explaining not only the history of the very diverse cuisine, but equally the techniques and the choice of ingredients. In fact, the lack of proper knowledge about the ingredients keeps many otherwise dedicate food lovers away from trying to prepare their own variants of Chinese meals. 

Chinese-ish. Home Cooking Not Quite Authentic. 100% Delicious by innovative chef Rosheen Kaul and brilliant illustrator Joanna Hu offers way more than it promises: an authentic food story which reflects the diverse identities of the authors, but also offers an exercise in taste, adapted to the palate of the Australian food lovers.

Even if you are not a great cook - like me, sometimes - the more than 200 pages of illustrations, tips and recipes are delightful in the most hungry way. The above mentioned Peking duck is there, alongside with a smart selection of stocks, noodle soups, dumplings, noodles and rice - I may revise over and over again the notes about ´how to cook rice without a rice cooker´. There are tips about techniques and pantry staples.

The recipes shared in the book convene memories and identity stories - both personal and generational. Through generations, exposed to various influences, those recipes developed into authentic identity stories. The next generation of Asians born in Australia will most likely rewrite those recipes and so will do their children and grand-children. It is part of the beauty of identity to be on the move. For the rest of us, reading about and/or maybe having a bit of the featured meals, it´s a story that repeats itself. Only to become better and better.

I only wish I can travel to Australia soon to experience myself the menus offered by Rosheen Kaul at Etta Dining. 

Rating: 5 stars

Disclaimer: Book offered as part of the book tour but the opinions are, as usual, my own

Romantic Book Review: Uncoupling by Lorraine Brown

 

It was a long time since I´ve read a romantic novel, and the reason has less to do with an eventual decrease of interest on my side in romantic inspiration, but rather due to a relatively ´serious´ neverending reading list. But a love story burgeoning in Paris cannot be skipped therefore, this week I took a couple of hours break from my heavy thinking and enjoyed a long late summer evening in the company of Uncoupling/Paris connection by Lorraine Brown. 

Hannah and Si - short for Simon - are on their way back from Venice to Amsterdam, to attend Catherine´s - Si´s sister - glamorous wedding. They are together for a while and things looks to go in the right, committed direction. As Hannah is falling asleep in a different part of the train and missed her connection, she ends up in Paris with a couple of hours before her delayed connection to Amsterdam, with a handsome French Léo as her companion. In around 10 hours, she is showed around the beautiful city, get to know Léo's friends and even is revealed some unpleasant truths about her boyfriend.

Once being back together in Amsterdam though, there is even more suspense added to their story as it seems that all the cards of their carefully built love story are falling apart.

Personally, I loved the idea of the romance, of two strangers, left together by fate for a couple of hours and - relatively predictable - the way of getting to know and probably develop some feelings for each other. The hint of mystery and unknown in Hannah´s relationship as well as the possible romantic development with someone else do make the reading suspenseful. I also resonate the ending as it does not promise anything and avoids a sugary unexpected development. 

However, there are some parts of the book that did not come into the right pieces for me and they mostly had to do with the timeline. For me, it took an eternity to fit all the many events that happened in around half a day. I am a very fast traveller and it happens to know Paris as well, thus I dare to think that the timeline is highly overrated. Half of the events would have made the story more realistic especially when not all the events added do really matter for the further advancing of the narrative.

Despite those shortcomings. Uncoupling shares an useful relationship intelligence, through relatable, well built characters. And when it involves France and Paris, one can never get completely wrong, I hope. 

Plus, I also see this book as a movie. A Romantic movie, obviously.

Rating: 3 stars

Short Stories: American Estrangement by Saïd Sayrafiezadeh

Saïd Sayrafiezadeh latest collection of short stories, American Estrangement, takes the reader completely unprepared. I am identifying with the average, book lover reader, reading for pleasure, keen to new, but not always finding that new take that completely blows my mind. This intellectual challenge may come when I read novels, or theatre, but rarely through short stories. Until you write like Bora Chung. Or like Saïd Sayrafiezadeh.

His Brief Encounters with the Enemy was at a certain extent predictable, in the vein of the post-9/11 America. Well written, I agree, but the take was not unique and the tragi-comical cynicism expected, belonging to a certain (over) self-critical take on America. American Estrangement is exactly what estrangement is all about: separation - one one´s self, reality, meaning, life. There is a desenchentment of an existential nature. The bodies are displaced in a fake surrounding. 

But if the ambiance may be a familiar surrounding, the ways of the 7 stories is a completely different level of talent, denying the danger of a potential predictable storyline. Hence, the effect of surprise, a pleasant intellectual challenge. 

Saïd Sayrafiezadeh is a fine artist of the short story genre both in terms of the inspiration and the literary talent. 

Rating: 5 (full) stars

´La Femme au Colt 45´ by Marie Redonnet

´´Pour être forte, je dois vivre comme si je n´aimais personne. Personne!´

In a couple of his correspondences to literary friends and acknowledgements, Chekhov mentions how every element added in a story should be necessary, otherwise the irrelevant details need to be removed. This applies as well to a gun who, obviously in this line of thinking, should not only be there as an inanimate object, but be an active part of the story.

In La Femme au Colt 45 - The Woman with a Colt 45 - the character of Marie Redonnet´s book, a women escaping the dictatorship of Azirie, reinventing herself in the neighbouring La Santarie, is accompanied by her gun. A gun which before being sold, is saving her, keeping her company and equally playing a role in her new network of friends. 

Once, she used to be the star of Le Théâtre Magique - The Magic Theatre. Her husband, Zuka, was a public intellectual until he become critical against the government of gen. Rafi. Her son ended up fighting in a guerilla movement. She gathered all her belongings and escaped out of the country on a boat. At 50, the reinvented Lora Sanders is starting a new life, where survival is what it matters. Love and feelings and family are things of the past, not to be reiterated.

With a theatrical touch - La Femme was also played on the stage - the relatively short book - is a meeting of many possible categorisations, hopefully escaping all of them for the overall sake of the literary emancipation of all possible narrow mindsets. Like Lora, the text is dancing freely among words of literary sophistication, inadequate enough to fully describe the prose: social story, immigration story, adventurous account, women literature. Sometimes, we forget the pleasure of just getting lost in a text, simply by putting our simplicity- and clarity-addicted mind on hold.

Rating: 4.5 stars 

Ghost Lover: Short Stories by Lisa Taddeo

 

I am falling more and more lately for short stories and I discover more and more subtle arts to write them. I will never betray novels and long stories, but short ones, many of them, do have the ability to open up worlds that because their shortness can convene more mystery and inspire the reader to continue her or himself what the story left unadressed. 

As in the case of novels, the characters from short stories may be sympathetic or not, but nevertheless the quality of the writing and the accuracy of the composition will matter in the end. In the case of the collection of stories by Lisa Taddeo, Ghost Lover, I completely despised the female characters. Insecure, suicidal, obsessed with their weight, appearance, and their unrealistic expectations. Somehow, until the end of the volume I felt that there is almost the same character, wandering aimlessly from one story to another. 

However, their stories are different, although built around almost the same concept. The art of the writer is to amplify in one story what was left behind in another. The terms of the discussions and the relationship framing resonate very much with my millennial mindset but I would rather prefer a way to get out of my own generational mysery. But it is my choice in denial which does not diminish the literary skills of Taddeo. Only that looking myself in the mirror may be exhausting, no matter how much I appreciate my own self.

Rating: 3 stars 

Random Things Tours: The Last Party by Clare Mackintosh

 

An atmospheric thriller set in a village at the Welsh-English border, The Last Party, the newest by the bestseller author Clare Mackintosh is a procedural murder investigation with lots of suspects, a victim whose death revealed a lot of skeletons in the closet and police investigators equally non-disclosing stories from their past.

At a holiday home near Lake Mirror, the successful opera singer Rhys Lloyd invited the village to enjoy a slice of his new wealth - and eventually a glass of champagne, for the NYE´s party. A former opera singer celebrity, his career moved in a different direction lately, nevertheless he smells new money and glamour. All this will be gone until the end of the party. This will be his last party as soon he will be found death on the lake. 

The question: ´Who did it?´ is very hard to answer, and the more suspects are added to the list, the more dirty secrets from Lloyd´s life are revealed. On a different scale, DC Ffion Morgan and DC Leon Brady of Cheshire aren´t so innocent either, but being an adult means also that you may have a selective memory about your own past, isn´t it?

Being revealed the diverse histories of the characters is more interesting than the journey itself to find out the culprits. I am usually a lover of thriller action and following the investigation is what matters the most, but this time, I dared to make a difference and follow the interaction between characters, both in the present time but particularly through their past histories. It is a different way to proceed to the solution and I was delighted to accept the challenge.

The book is the first from the series aimed to feature DC Morgan and I can´t wait to read more mysteries investigated by her.

The Last Party is written in the vein of a classical thriller, that requires both passion and patience from the reader. I hope it will not take too long until will be able to read a new adventure from this series or any other book by Mackintosh. 

Rating: 4.5 stars

Disclaimer: Book offered as part of the book tour but the opinions are, as usual, my own

If ´Ends Good´

 

Sibylle Berg is a chronicler of a souldeath collection of humans. They react as the advertising is requesting them to do, their relationships are cartoonish and so are their human interactions in general. Ende gut - Ends Good, is a cynical parody of the everyday life and an exploration of emptiness in a capitalist framework. 

It is a kind of voyeurist outlook into lives bereaved of their existence. Political stereotypes and tics, consumerist obsessions, cheap lives, all is exposed and over-revealed. The whole human show through a literary peephole camera.

The idea is not new and not bad either, but there is a certain repetition that although maybe intentional it does exhaust and ends up - not good - as the tired everyday lives it explores. The construction of the text - with the O-Tone add on through which backoff voices are multiplying the original effect of the initial story. 

Although overall I haven´t been intellectually impressed by the book in terms of originality, the literary construction and the prose as such are a recommended lecture for anyone looking either to learn about modern German literary trends or to improve the level of German fluency, or, why not, both.

Either way, it ´ends good´.

Rating: 3 stars

Book Review: Discretion by Faïza Guène translated by Sarah Ardizzone

 

One of the winners of English PEN Award, Discretion (in the original French, La Discrétion) by Faïza Guène, translated from French by Sarah Ardizzone, shed light to the episode of French colonial past in Algeria, through the story of a family of Algerian origin living in France. 

Yamina moved from Algeria to France, as newly wed with an Algerian man working in the construction industry. Daughter of a fighter for Algeria´s independence. After a rough start, now in her 70s she learned to be content together with her daughters and son. It is not necessarily what she would call home, but as she will ackwnoledge by the end of the story, home is where her family is. However, her children, born in France, with long summer vacations spent in their home country, do react to the everyday shift in race relationships and daily racism. They cannot be content, no matter how much they love their family. As many of the second-generation immigrants, they refuse to choose silence. 

The story of the children, each different although not excessively revolutionary - as the publishing industry may expect sometimes from characters belonging to this category - in their separate note from the majority they live in, reflects different fragments of immigrant existence. Yamina, a girl and a woman and a mother who saw too much, but survives life with grace, modestly and humbly. It´s one of my favorite women characters in a long time, for her gentle soul and natural wisdom of accepting fate.

Although I rarely read books written in French in English - or any kind of - translation, I can only admire the beautiful rendition by Sarah Ardizzone, a well-deserved. There are a couple of Algerian writers I´ve descovered lately, but Guène is one of the brilliant, and hopefully I will read some of her other books soon. 

Rating: 4.5 stars

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

Book Review: Bitter Orange Tree by Jokha Alharthi translated by Marilyn Booth

 

In a similar tone with Celestial Bodies, Bitter Orange Tree (Narinjah, in original Arabic) by Jokha Alharthi translated from Arabic by Marilyn Booth is a multi-generational story about women told by women. 

Celestial Bodies, the 2019 Booker Prize Winner, is a history of coming-of-age, told by the intertwinned stories of three sisters. Narinjah, Alharthi´s second novel to appear in English, starts as an account of Zuhour, an Omani student in an unnamed British city, facing the choice between assimilation and preserving her roots. 

The relocation in a new country and culture is an as easy as the relocation companies may want you to believe. Being away from your family, your familiar environment, the places sharing the memories of your childhood is an uprooting experience that no matter how easy or hard is overcome, it leaves traces into the soul. Through stories through, we keep alive the memories and we bring to life our life even. 

We tend to befriend people with at least few similar memories, sharing the same tastebuds. Zuhour is one foot in the new world, another in the world of memories, of women with no time to reflect about their life, but nevertheless involved in their lives and the lives of the other. The memory shifts in Bitter Orange Tree are smooth, working similarly with the way in which memory works: spontaneously, impulsive, persistent but only for short amount of time. 

I may say that I loved this book more than the Celestial Bodies, for this memory fluency literarily reproducing real memory patterns. Also, the women voices were more clear for me, coming from women themselves fluent in the language of their life. The elements of folklore and fragment of fantastic dreams adds interesting twists to the story, takes you out of your normal memory flow to project the image of a much deeper memory lane.

I feel priviledged and grateful for the work of translators allowing to the non-Arabic speaker the access to such literary gems. Otherwise, there will be so many world sealed for ever and the world literary memory will definitely be much poorer.

Rating: 4 stars

German Book Review: Wunderbare Jahre/Wonderful Years by Sibylle Berg

I am relatively late in exploring Sibylle Berg, one of Germany´s most popular women writers, first revealed to me via a movie, a paraphrasing of Who´s Afraid of Virginia Woolf called Wer hat Angst von Sibylle Berg?. Weimar-born Swiss citizen, Berg is the type of intellectual who is over-observing the world and re-translating the details into her own writings. Actually, every writer is doing it, only that her, she is over invested in the human nature. That kind of human nature which is influenced by and follows the ways of politics and social changes and challenges. 

Wunderbare Jahre. Als wir noch die Welt bereisten - Wonderful Years. When we were still travelling the world, in my approximate translation - is a collection of intertwined stories (not through the characters, but the common context and topics). It is a world before and after 9/11, although terrorism in its various forms, existed since forever, and hijacking was a common occurrence in the 1970s especially. 

The world ´explored´ through contemporary travel unifies under the pressure of conforming to certain society models and expectations. We go on cruises or we are looking to fill our bucket list, we take pictures where everyone does it because it is the trend to do so. Everyone is doing this and there is nothing to criticize here. 

Berg is observing and re-creates the game of circumstances which presented as a sequence of facts, magnified, are looking and sounding grotesque, hilarious but relatable. Inspired by the author´s self travel memories and experience between 1994 and 2015, it includes a ´before´ and ´after´ although cynically speaking, the tendency was always there. Towards travelling the world while actually ignoring the world, but especially the human drama behind the glossy guided tours. A human comedy unfolding and a fine lesson of active observation.

Rating: 4 stars

Random Things Tours: The Hive by Scarlett Brade

 

Our everyday world is wrapped in illusions and there is no one to blame for. Life is running too fast and although we are equipped with high-end tools, our brain simply cannot catch with the speed. Thus, we are exposed to fast food stories, with an artificial - yet addictive - taste while forgetting the real flavours. 

The Hive by Scarlett Brade targets far from any other thrillers I´ve read before. As its medium is my beloved volatile social media. Charlotte Godwin is running an Instagram live, announcing (live, obviously) that she just killed the new girlfriend of her ex. Now, it is about time to take care of the ex himself, Lincoln Jackson, a famous boxing champion whom she met after he got in touch with her via Instagram. And it is not as easy as it looks because the viewers - and we, as readers too - are invited to decide Lincoln´s fate, based on the step-by-step revelations she is sharing about him. A reality show anyone can do. Only that the price costs a life.

I didn´t know before that there is a specific gender of thriller called ´revenge thriller´, but before acknowledging the literary classifications, The Hive actually is going far beyond any limits, literary boxes and taboos. We may be shocked and this is rightly so, and I´m sure that it will take some time until I will be as shocked by a thriller take. But it is definitely worth for the complexity of human landscape as well as for the mental suspense we are constantly undergoing from the very beginning of the book. 

I particularly enjoyed the creativity of the story, with new takes and twists added at the right moment. For instance, by including her best friends as part of the audience, there is a different level of moral take which is how far solidarity and particularly sisterhood should go. 

The Hive is a book that will stay with me for a long time for both the subject and the courageous narrative take. Imagination has no limits and so is the strength to explore topics that one may think about but never dare to write about. Revenge may survive on its own terms though.

Rating: 4.5 stars

Disclaimer: Book offered as part of the book tour, but the opinions are, as usual, my own

Random Things Tours: Sherpa by Ankit Babu Adhikari and Pradeep Bashyal

´On the way to the summit, sherpas are the climbers´ guardians, in charge of time and space´.

Mountain Everest is an industry worth many millions of dollars and sherpa community plays an important role not only from the social and economic point of view, but as witnesses and factors of the continous changes. In Sherpa, writer and researcher Ankit Babu Adhikari and the Katmandu-based BBC correspondent Pradeep Bashyal are documenting the background and life stories surrounding the mountain based on historical information and interviews.

Although the book is relatively short, it offers an unique glimpse into the activities, histories, heroes and victims of the Everest. It maps various trekking peaks and invites the reader to have a look at the everyday (busy) life at the Everest Base Camp, the tent-city standing on a glacier. Even among people who are fascinated about mountaineering, such information are rare gems and rarely understood in the right perspective - including by covering the anthropological takes on sherpa community, a Himalayan ethnic group of Nepal counting around 150,000, many involved in the ´Everest business´ from more than a generation.

Sherpa. Stories from Life and Death from the Forgotten Guardians of Everest is a book of interest for both anthropologists and mountain lovers, as well as anyone curious to read a well-written book about a fascinating mountain and its complex history.

Rating: 4.5 stars

Disclaimer: Book offered as part of the book tour, but the opinions are, as usual, my own

Book Review: Jugend by Tove Ditlevsen translated into German by Ursel Allenstein

 

I continued exploring the Copenhague Trilogy with the next volume covering the ´young years´ of Tove Ditlevsen, as she is about to move away from home and has her first poem published. The book starts with her first working day - which may be the last too - but continues with her fine observations of Denmark at war, the social precarity surrounding her and her new human and self-discoveries.

There are many elements that at this age it´s hard to come to pieces altogether in real life, even harder within the literary realm. In Youth/Jugend, as I read the book in the German translation from Danish by Ursel Allenstein, the voice is curious as what is happening to her is not necessarily planned, although she is working hard toward it. There is that impulse of the youth towards the world and its people, something that maybe later will be consider as ´mistakes´ but right now it is just pure desire - to discover, explore, try. In a way that makes you curious to see what will finally happen to Tove in the next - and last - volume.

Her voice resonate with the style of contemporary memoir writers, like Rachel Cusk which testifies that memoir writing is not a matter of timebounded style but, as some may expect, of personality. A mindset that may transcend times and centuries in the name of literature is a curious journey in itself.

Rating: 4 stars

An ABC Guide to Children´s Games Around the World

 

The indefatigable travel writer and expat expert Nicole Brewer is taking the children and their parents too to a joyful curious discovery of children´s games around the world. Her newest book An ABC Guide to Children´s Games Around the Globe appropriately illustrated by the Ukrainian-born artist Mariia Luzina is a journey from A to Z through children´s games.

The writing is up to the point, in a way which both describes and entices, both the children and their parents. I don´t remember any children book aimed to introduce various games - other than computer games - around the world, and therefore the book is valuable in terms of the information generously shared with the reader. 

Another good take of the book is that it features mostly countries rarely featured - for good reasons, that´s it - in the everyday news and travel reports. Thus, the little ones will definitely be curious to find out more about countries like Liberia, Columbia, Peru, Nigeria, or Haiti. With the innocence of the age, I am sure that learning about how other children are spending their times will do them much better than discovering those countries later in life, through the biased everyday distorted mindset.

An ABC Guide to Children´s Games Around the World is a book that will keep the children busy during long flights or train rides, but will equally encourage children to see the world through different lenses. I sipped any bit of information shared and hope to be able to find out more about the games featured. 

I just hope that more parents, but also school, will acquire the ABC Guide...because it open minds while sharing the kind of knowledge someone needs to start his or her own international journey.

Rating: 5 stars

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

´Le Jour où Nina Simone a cessé de chanter´

Darina Al Joundi brief memoir of growing up in Lebanon in the time of war and sectarian dissent, with a anti-religious father moving on in the intellectual and ´revolutionary´ circles of the Middle East of the 1980s is unsettling and brutal for more than one reason. Not because as a little girl she was charmed by Carlos ´The Jackal´ who taught her how to use a weapon. Or for her impulsive sexual explorations.

The memoir was played by Al Joundi - who experienced with theatre while in Lebanon - at the Avignon Theatre Festival and I can perfectly imagine what an emotionally direct way it is to communicate such a packed amount of feelings. But there is no flow of emotions taking over the discourse. Instead it is the reader him- or herself being trapped in a story which is individual yet sharing the never ending drama of Lebanon.

I will not get stuck making detailed political comments about the facts mentioned, including the context of ´The Jackal´ story because it is less relevant, but the succesion of events helped me more than any book of political science to improve my comprehension of intellectual mindsets faster and deeper than if I would have spend months reading the news. Memorialistic writings do help more in this respect.

But history is more than a succession of facts chronologically shared. When the will of the individual meets the official history, the individual, particularly women, are strongly hit against the wall of indifference. A woman is never safe in the wake of history.

Rating: 4.5 stars