Emezi's Freshwater was an incredible read and a real insight into a cultural perspective, taking you inside it and experiencing it, so I was very muchEmezi's Freshwater was an incredible read and a real insight into a cultural perspective, taking you inside it and experiencing it, so I was very much looking forward to this next work.
Though we learn that Vivek is dead from the cover and in the opening pages, the novel is in a sense a mystery as the details around the death are not revealed until the end. The novel is set in Nigeria, in a community of mostly mixed race families.
The narrative is multi perspective, told through the voice of Vivek, his cousin and close friend Osita and a third-person omniscient narrator. The first chapter is one sentence:
They burned down the market on the day Vivek Oji died.
The market burning down provides a beginning, a middle and an ending, it features in exactly those places, here as a marker or a clue, in the middle as an observation by a previously unknown character whose wife runs a stall in the middle of the market and at the end, when Vivek's final day is shared.
The first half of the book we get to know the families, Chika, his brother Ekene, married to Mary, then later Chika's Indian wife Kavita, parents to Vivek. The narrative tells the story of their marriage, of how they try to raise their only child. Kavita is part of a group of women referred to as the Nigerwives.
She had learned to cook Nigerian food from her friends - a group of women, foreign like her, who were married to Nigerian men and were aunties to each other's children. They belonged to an organisation called Nigerwives, which helped them assimilate into these new lives so far away from the countries they'd come from. They weren't wealthy expats, at least not the ones we knew. They didn't come to work for oil companies; they simply came for their husbands, for their families.
Through the friendships of the mothers, Osita and Vivek become friends with JuJu and Elisabeth. Among themselves, away from school or family and outside of society, they are already a group who is different, and with each other, they are accepting, able to express themselves, though they have each inherited varying degrees of conditioning from their mixed parentage.
Vivek is sent away to school, about which we learn very little, we know he is unhappy and bears scars.
The narrative explores the development of their friendships and sexuality, interspersed with the present day obsession of Kavita, determined to find out how her son's body mysteriously turned up on their front veranda wrapped in a fabric.
Chika didn't want to ask any question. Kavita, though, was made of nothing but questions, hungry questions bending her into a shape that was starving for answers.
Maybe it was intentional, but in creating the element of mystery, much about the character of Vivek is held back, perhaps to recreate the effect of what the parent might have experienced, but for me personally, I found it disappointing that the character of Vivek was compromised and an opportunity missed to inhabit that character more.
The deliberate obscuring heightens the effect of the reveal, but sacrifices the opportunity to share something more profound with readers. It's difficult to develop empathy for a character, when so much is held back and when the potential is clearly there.
That was why they'd kept it from their parents, to protect Vivek from those who didn't understand him. They barely understood him themselves, but they loved him, and that had been enough.
It's a novel of secrets and lies and the debate of truth versus respect, in that belief that the two can't coexist. And the safety inherent within a fear of judgement by some, versus the danger of a lack of fear in others. A theme that is likely to continue to be explored by Emezi.
"Look," she said, "eventually all secrets come out. It's just a matter of time. And the longer it takes, the worse it is in the end."
As I read, I can feel what I am bringing to the narrative, where I want the author to go and by the end they do go some of the way, but not all. And that is on me, it is asking an already courageous writer to go further, to places that us readers, like sports fans, might never go ourselves, but from the benches we shout in encouragement. So I leave the last words to the author, as a reminder to us all of what this is.
I had to remember why I was making this work. I wasn’t making it for institutional validation. I was making this work for specific people — all the people living in these realities feeling lonely and wanting to die because they’re like, this world thinks I’m crazy and I don’t belong here. All the little trans babies who are just like, there is no world in which my parents will love me and accept me. There’s a mission to all of this. Akwaeke Emezi
Totally engaging characters and storyline all the way through, sad to have left them all behind.
Such a tough line Solo, the son of Betty takes, too yoTotally engaging characters and storyline all the way through, sad to have left them all behind.
Such a tough line Solo, the son of Betty takes, too young to know what preceded him, and a mother's dilemma of not wishing to cast her son's father as a villain, while suffering the son's judgement of her, having cast her as the 'baddie' instead.
And the delightful, lost Mr Chetan. Living in a country where he is unable to be himself, yet finding a way to make the lives of those around him better. Cast out from his own, he is everyone's friend....more
"If life is but a passage, let us at least scatter flowers on that passage."
What a refreshing read to end 2020 with, a novel of interwoven characters
"If life is but a passage, let us at least scatter flowers on that passage."
What a refreshing read to end 2020 with, a novel of interwoven characters and connections, threaded throughout the life of Violette Touissant, given up at birth.
When I was born I didn't even cry. So I was put aside, like a 2.67kg parcel with no stamp, no addressee, while the administrative forms were filled in, declaring my departure prior to my arrival. Stillborn. A child without life and without a surname.
When we first meet Violette, she is an adult, she introduces us to her neighbours and many of their characteristics in common (a list of the things they are not), they are an intriguing lot.
My name is Violette Toussaint. I was a level-crossing keeper and now I'm a cemetery keeper.
Her neighbours are the dead and she lives in the heaven of the living, at the mid-range of life having been through plenty of pain and suffering to get there. She is now being rewarded, she has found her place and her people and those who deserved to be part of it, have found her too.
My present life is a present from heaven. As I say to myself every morning, when I open my eyes. I have been very unhappy, destroyed even. Nonexistent.Drained. I was like my closest neighbours, but worse. My vital functions were functioning, but without me inside them.
The 94 short chapters all begin with a thought provoking quote, the narrative seesaws back and forth to moments in that life, sometimes revisiting the same moments, but seeing them from the point of view of Violette, her husband Philippe and the many other pairs of characters we meet, through their connection to those neighbours.
Since taking on the job of cemetery keeper, after meeting one of the most life-changing characters, Sasha, she records details of the events that take place in the cemetery, like diary entries, references that she is able to refer back to when people stop by to have a cup of tea or something stronger, looking for the resting place of someone important to them, not always family, but people with connections that weren't always able to be fully expressed in life.
Death never takes a break. It knows neither summer holidays, not public holidays, nor dentist appointments...It's there, everywhere, all the time. No one really thinks about it, or they'd go mad. It's like a dog that's forever weaving around our legs, but whose presence we only notice when it bites us. Or worse, bites a loved one.
We are taken back to her early adult life, from the age of 18, already married, the year she discovered an 821 page novel that would stay with her all through the years, L'Oeuvre de Dieu, la part du Diable a French translation of John Irving's The Cider House Rules, a book known to open minds and hearts, eliciting compassion for a set of circumstances no one really thinks about, making the reader look at the world in a slightly different way. Which is in part, what Fresh Water For Flowers does, taking characters in unconventional circumstances and sharing their stories, watching how those stories can shock and then enlighten others.
Violette too will have to deal with death. A death that develops into the more significant mystery at the core of the novel. And with it, innumerable twists and turns, suspicions and revelations.
Life is but an endless losing of all that one loves.
Every summer she spends time in the chalet of her friend Célia, in the calanque of Sormiou, Marseille, the landscapes of Marcel Pagnol's trilogy. A place of refuge and rejevenation, that Perrin too brings alive and elicits the recovery this nature protected part of the Mediterranean offers humanity.
It's a gentle novel because even though there are moments of tragedy, they are seen through the eyes of the most empathetic character, so even the most villainous, unlikable characters are given a generous, understanding hearing.
The details of the life of a keeper, whether it's the level crossing or the cemetery are so realistic, evocative and visual, it wouldn't surprise me to hear that this book will soon be turned into a series; it's too long for a movie and with so many interconnecting lives, it even feels like it could have continued, just as life and death does, always someone arriving, someone departing, and someone there to soothe the way through those transitions.
What an unexpected pleasure this was. I spent a week reading it, always looked forward to picking it up and loved the shared narrative between father What an unexpected pleasure this was. I spent a week reading it, always looked forward to picking it up and loved the shared narrative between father and son as they travelled around the world on a research ship, during 8 months, revisiting the sites of Renzo's architectural designs and his memory of the creative process, of the people he met with to understand their needs and that of the community his structures would serve and the incredible cultural immersion all those projects have given, this now 80 year old architect and father.
Renzo and Carlo set sail from Genoa one late summer day, and from the blurb, would have us believe:
guided by the ancestral desire felt by many explorers before them to find Atlantis, the perfect city, built to harbour a perfect society
It is as much a conversation as a travelogue and one that takes place when 80 year old Renzo is still contemplating retirement, this revisiting of his projects and the reflection they invite, the inspiration of old, the dissatisfaction with things he might have done different and the provocation and scandal that his early work, (Beauborg - the Centre Pompidou in Paris) caused.
Sins of Youth After the Paris adventure he spent years defending himself against people who feared they would put pipes up everywhere. Rogers suffered the same fate, a fate reserved for heretics in the Middle Ages.
"I see Beauborg as a joyful urban machine, which inspires more than a few questions."
The son Carlo questions and muses and creates the narrative structure within which his father responds and reflects and by the end I can't even say whose narrative I prefer, there is such a wonderful synergy and relation between the two, Carlo is able to dig further than an interviewer might, because it is his father he knows so well, referring to him by many names throughout, the Explorer, the Constructor, the Old Man. Does he call him the Philosoper? I'm not sure, but he is, his subject creativity and beauty.
Having educated us in how the word 'beauty' differs in Italian, French and many other languages, something that means 'good and beautiful, intrinsic in the essence of something' he reminisces with his staff on their collective purpose: (in a letter he writes on the ship to them on the day of his 80th birthday)
"The pursuit of beauty. The word is hard to articulate. As soon as you open your moth, it flies off, like a bird of paradise. Beauty can not be caught, but we are obliged to reach for it. Beauty is not neutral; pursuing it is a political act. Building is a grand act, a gesture toward peace, the opposite of destruction."
I found the entire book engaging, their journey and revisiting the building projects along the Tames and the Seine, in New Caledonia and New York, San Franciso and Osaka Bay and finally to Athens, providing just enough information and context to keep the narrative interesting and intriguing, with the addition of that element of humanity that only two people who know each other as well as these two could bring.
A light touch allows you, even at your most determined, to listen to others and seek to understand them. A heavy tread you're better off without. Lightness is key to understanding places, and, in that sense, an architect must inhabit the places where he works. I have been a Parisian, a Berliner, a New Yorker, a Londoner, A Kanak. All the while remaining who I am. I think an architect who does not recognize himself in the place he is building cannot capture its soul.
I read this because it was referenced in the last pages of Leila Aboulela's excellent The Kindness of Enemies and is set in the same location as the hI read this because it was referenced in the last pages of Leila Aboulela's excellent The Kindness of Enemies and is set in the same location as the historical part of her book, 1850's Caucasus. Aboulela's book centres on the kidnap of A Russian Princess and her time in captivity under the protection of the Highlander Shamil Imam. He wishes to trade her for his son, help captive by the Russians for more than ten years.
Tolstoy was in the Russian army for a time and clearly witnessed many missions. One of the events he had knowledge of and wrote about, though this novella was published post-humously by his wife, was the defection to Russia and subsequent killing of one of Shamil Khan's chieftans, another Highlander, Hadji Murad.
Though I'm not a huge fan of the classics, there are some exceptions and I did enjoy Anna Karenina, however having read Aboulela's version which really brings the characters alive and highlights their dilemmas so openly, I found it hard to connect with Tolstoy's tale, which rarely touches on lives other than the soldiers and noble decision makers.
The opening scene though is brilliant, the ploughed field, bereft of life, everything turned over, leaves only one sturdy thistle, half destroyed but for that one stalk still standing tall, the flower head emitting its bold crimson colour.
The land was well tilled and nowhere was there a blade of grass or any kind of plant to be seen; it was all black. "Ah, what a destructive creature is man... How many different plant lives he destroys to support his own experience!" thought I, involuntarily looking round for some living thing in this lifeless black field.
It is the scene that brings back the memory of this man Hadji Murad and compels him to write out those pages, perhaps purging himself of a ghastly memory.
"What energy!" I thought. "Man has conquered everything, and destroyed millions of plants, yet this one won't submit." And I remembered a Caucasian episode of years ago, which I had partly seen myself, partly heard of from eye-witnesses, and in part imagined.
It does make me think that he had intended not to publish it, that perhaps it was written for another purpose altogether. Particularly as, at the time he wrote it (1896-1903)
he was spending most of his time writing his virulent tracts against the art of fiction and denouncing some of the best writers in the world, including Shakespeare.
In conclusion, it highlights to me the importance of reading various perspectives of history, not just one side or the other, but also across gender. It is refreshing to read a female historian's fictional version of an age old conflict, inhabiting characters who observe from positions of lesser power, of oppression, for their powers of observation are that much stronger than the privileged, it being one of their necessary survival instincts....more
When I opened I, Tituba to begin reading, on the first page there is a quote from the author Maryse Condé that reads:
Tituba and I lived for a year on
When I opened I, Tituba to begin reading, on the first page there is a quote from the author Maryse Condé that reads:
Tituba and I lived for a year on the closest of terms. During our endless conversations she told me things she had confided to nobody else.
It gave me such a good feeling to read that, to know that Condé was doing here, what she does in her novel (though she calls it a work of non fiction) Victoire: My Mother's Mother, when the grandmother she had never met, would awaken her from her dreams and talk to her from the corner of the room, chastising her.
Sometimes I would wake up at night and see her sitting in a corner of the room, like a reproach, so different to what I had become.
‘What are you doing running around from Segu to Japan to South Africa? What’s the point of all these travels? Can’t you realise that the only journey that counts is discovering your inner self? That’s the only thing that matters. What are you waiting for to take an interest in me?’ she seemed to be telling me.
But that book won't be published until 20 years after Condé is having conversations with Tituba.
I, Tituba is the first novel written after Segu and The Children of Segu, historical masterpieces that disrupt and provoke, however the initial reaction was such that she'd declared she would never write about Africa again.
Tituba came to me or I came to her at a period of my life when really I wanted to turn toward the Caribbean and start writing about the Caribbean.
Tituba existed, she was accused and ultimately set free, however, though there were shelves of books about the Salem witch trials, there is very little factual information about her, about who she was, or who freed her, or her life after release from prison.
I felt this eclipse of Tituba's life was completely unjust. I felt a strong solidarity with her, and I wanted to offer her her revenge by inventing a life such as she might perhaps have wished it to be told.
If we look for her story in the history of Salem, it isn't there. Condé too, looked for her history in the colonization of the continent and found silences, omissions, distortions, fabrications and fleeting, enigmatic insinuations.
Review On a ship sailing for Barbados, Christ the King, young Abena was raped by an English sailor. Tituba was born from this act of aggression. Sold to a planter along with two male slaves, she was employed in the household until her pregnancy discovered whereupon she was banished to the cabin of one the male slaves Yao.
A short reprieve, they would find comfort in each other's company and Tituba would be named and loved by a man, more father to her than any other. But that joy in Yao that lightened and lit Abena's life, was seen by the master, who desired it for himself, she struck back, was hung for it and for his concubine's crime, Yao was sold.
Driven off the plantation, Tituba was taken in by an old woman, Mama Yaya, still grieving for her two sons, who had cultivated the ability to communicate with the invisible.
People were afraid of her, but they came from far and wide because of her powers.
Mama Yaya teaches her everything she knows, all her herbal remedies and after meeting her own mother in a dream:
Mama Yaya initiated me into the powers of knowledge. The dead only die if they die in our hearts. They live on if we cherish them and honour their memory, if we place their favourite delicacies in life on their graves, and if we kneel down regularly to commune with them.
And so Tituba is given a past, skills and knowledge and might have remained in that life, had she not grown into a young woman with desires herself and fallen for the man who would become her husband John Indian, who belonged to Goodwife Susanna Endicott in Carlisle Bay, who we encounter in the opening scene of Ann Petry's Tituba of Salem Village.
After a short period in that household where John has lived most of his life, things deteriorate and in an act of revenge the mistress sells them to Samuel Parris, even though Tituba is no slave, but for her husband, whom she could not leave.
In Boston, with the mistress unwell and in a room upstairs, Tituba spends time with the daughter Betsey and orphaned niece Abigail, who makes trouble for her, trouble that spreads like a contagion to other young girls in the community, as they fall prey to strange fits and mass hysteria.
I also recognized Abigail and Betsey's companions in their dangerous games, those young girls whose eyes were shining with excitement. They were dying to roll on the ground too and to attract everybody's attention.
And so the bad behaviours of girls are given credence, turning into accusations of witchcraft against Tituba and others, they are jailed and many lose their lives, until the Govener writes to London for advice on legal proceedings concerning witchcraft resulting in a general pardon and Tituba is condemned to live.
Prison costs mean she can only leave if someone pays and a man with nine children who has lost his wife claims her. And it is through this relation that she will gain her freedom and return full circle.
If the first part is written from compassion and revenge, the second part initially seems strange and challenges the reader, in its use of parody. I found this part difficult to understand, the reader isn't given the satisfaction of a gratifying ending, yet reading further into the essay and interview, I find myself confronted with my own subconscious bias and lack of understanding, a clever and deliberate intervention by the author.
And so Tituba is granted her revenge. We are all complicit.
I found that reading the book and then the few days of thinking about it after reading the interview resulted in a deeper reading experience and consideration. My feeling while reading was no doubt heightened by having read Ann Petry's sympathetic youth version first, Condé hadn't written a story to give hope or courage to today's youth, she was reckoning with the past.
I suggest that though Petry's version was written 30 years before, it might be better to read her more optimistic version last, if one wished to end on that note, despite the fact that her novel is as much fantasy, as Condé's is parody.
Like Condé, who knew and knows nothing of witchcraft, (she uses lots of literary inventions in the glossary at the end), I have decided to read a contemporary book next, one published in 2020, to see what's going on in the world of witchcraft today.
Earlier this year I read my first book by Leila Aboulela Bird Summons. I really enjoyed it for so many reasons, which can be read in my review here, bEarlier this year I read my first book by Leila Aboulela Bird Summons. I really enjoyed it for so many reasons, which can be read in my review here, but it also confirmed that I wanted to read more from this author and so I chose as the next book to read, one I have had my eye on for some years, but refused to buy because of the terrible cover. That might sound whimsical, but I think that earlier cover does this book a great disservice, the way it turns readers away.
I was completely drawn into this dual narrative story and loved both parts of it, a contemporary story of Natasha Wilson (born Natasha Hussein to a Russian mother and Sudanese father, themselves the product of Russian university education), who is now a university lecturer in Scotland, after her mother leaves her father and remarries a Scot. Natasha is friends with Malak, who is also mixed race, of Russian/Persian parentage, an actor, her son Oz, is in Natasha's class. Natasha is in their home when Oz is arrested and she too comes under suspicion.
Meanwhile, in Sudan, her father whom she hasn't seen for 20 years is dying and there is pressure for her to go and see him, along with resentment and ill-will, all of which are demands for her to stand up for herself and her existence, in her authenticity.
“It was an effort formulating this summary, explaining myself. I preferred the distant past, centuries that were over and done with, ghosts that posed no direct threat. History could be milked for this cause or that. We observed it always with hindsight, projecting onto it our modern convictions and anxieties.”
Interwoven between Natasha's story, we are taken to the Caucasus territory in the 1850's, to a period during the conflict between the Highlander mountain men lead by Shamil Imam, and the Russian army.
In earlier years, to settle a conflict, Shamil was only able to negotiate peace by surrendering his son Jamaleldin, who for the next ten years or so was raised as part of the Tsar's family (as his godson). Now Shamil's men have captured the (now) Russian Princess Anna (previously of Georgia- her grandfather ceded that territory to Russia), her French governess and two children Alexander and Lydia.
The Kindness of Enemies follows these stories and although one carries the heavyweight magnitude of a well-known story of significant characters in history, the foreshadowing of it by a modern story, brings to light the many aspects of the past, whose threads might be seen as being current today.
Much of the literature read of the Caucasus in the literary imagination is told from the Russian perspective, by their grand novelists like Tolstoy, Pushkin, whereas Leila Aboulela, by setting the historical part during the time of the Princesses capture, takes us on that journey, re-imagining the events that took place, understanding better the complicated and mixed sympathies of Anna, her grief and how the 8 months in captivity changes her.
She also presents the perspective of young Jamaleldin in another light, how his childhood memories lie dormant yet present, his mixed feelings of the return, and his reality of feeling a part of himself belonging to both worlds, the Highlands and to St Petersburg.
In the contemporary world, Natasha experiences something of the same, born of culturally different parents, spending her childhood in country and her adulthood in another. She has to create her own sense of belonging, to find peace of mind somehow, with being neither one thing or the other, having no one place called home, her's, almost by necessity is a spiritual journey, determined by the need for her soul to find home, rather than her body or mind.
“I said that I was not a good Muslim but that I was not a bad person.I said I had a brother that I wanted to keep in touch with. I said that I wanted to give up my share of the inheritance to him. Apart from my father's Russian books and Russian keepsakes, I wanted nothing. I said that I did not come here today to fight over money or for the share of a house. I came so that I would not be an outcast, so that I would, even in a small way, faintly, marginally, tentatively, belong.”
As I read the closing pages, I learn that Leo Tolstoy's final novella, a work of autofiction, also takes place in this world, during events that Tolstoy was a part of. I had never even heard of Hadji Murád, but it feels like an essential read to follow on from The Kindness of Enemies.
A short story from 1899, this is the third in a series I've read and the one I've enjoyed the most so far. It's about a group of fishermen who have beA short story from 1899, this is the third in a series I've read and the one I've enjoyed the most so far. It's about a group of fishermen who have been fishing on an ice floe, who neglect to notice that the ice has moved away from the shore, until it is too late.
Stranded, as the ice moves further out to sea and begins to break up, they divide into groups, discuss what they will do and form allegiances. The author observes the different interactions and conversations between the men and the one boy present, presenting their differing responses to a potential human tragedy.
The ending turns things around and it is as if it is the reader, now being observed by the author....more
I was given this to read by a friend, along with three other mini books in translation published by Paper & Ink so perhaps not surprising that this waI was given this to read by a friend, along with three other mini books in translation published by Paper & Ink so perhaps not surprising that this wasn't for me, as it's not something I would have been drawn to otherwise. It's a small book with very short three stories:
1. The idea of the butterfly man was interesting and the story, as often circus stories are, was sad.
2. The story of the man who becomes invisible when he wears a beret and uses it to his advantage to try and seduce a beautiful woman, was frustrating and even sadder. Another thought provoking story about a man and magic hat, I did enjoy was Antoine Laurain's The President's Hat.
3. The cantankerous man in the cafe trying to write the Great Poem, protected and indulged by those around him was painful, it made me think of Hadley Richardson and Zelda Fitzgerald, wishing that what happened to this poet might have happened to Ernest and F.Scott. Men who regard themselves of great self-importance are of little interest to me....more
The concept of this illustrated children's book really appealed to me. It's inspired and based on the childhood of a Swedish artist Berta Hansson (192The concept of this illustrated children's book really appealed to me. It's inspired and based on the childhood of a Swedish artist Berta Hansson (1920-1994) during the period in her life when she was 12 years old and just wanted to be outdoors in nature or painting or making birds out of clay.
However, her father was strict and serious and her mother was frail and in bed very ill, so she was needed to help out in the home and on the farm, and all the more so when one of her older sisters is sent away to study domestic science.
Sometimes she sneaks out at night and walks to the trees by the doctor's house, the only person who has ever complimented her on her art.
I peer in. He sits in the armchair, reading and smoking his pipe. If he saw me, I would die. Paintings hang on his walls from the floor to the ceiling. They are so beautiful. I can't stop looking at them. To think that someone has painted them.
It is a story of family, expectations and obligations, and of the longing a child has for something that is difficult to articulate or express in words, little understood by the world of adults. How to realise your dreams when the way is not clear.
I enjoy fable-like stories or those that reference them and when I saw this title, I was captivated and intrigued by the image and concept of a rain hI enjoy fable-like stories or those that reference them and when I saw this title, I was captivated and intrigued by the image and concept of a rain heron. It reminded me of reading The Crane Wife and so I thought why not, see what this eco-fable was about.
The first chapter tells what I imagined was the original fable of the rain heron and the unlucky farmer, and from what I can gather, the author has made this story up as well. It's a story of a woman running a farm, the daughter of generations of farmers, but one who struggles for many reasons no matter what methods she tries.
Until one day a big storm comes and destroys nearly everything; at the end of which she is found curiously draped over the branches of an old oak tree. More curious than this was the large heron that rose out of the floodwaters, leaving not a ripple behind it, that landed on the branch beside her. The birds blue grey feathers were so light, they were almost transparent. When it flew off, water fell from its wings like rain. Its appearance changed the fortune of the unlucky farmer, until the neighbour's jealous son's envy caused her bad luck to return.
So is it a fable? It's a tale of someone who has bad luck, who for a period their luck changes, but as with life, good luck causes jealously in others, who have destructive tendencies. And so the bad luck continues.
"I just set out to write a story where real characters or characters that felt real had their lives intertwined with the nature fable."
Arnott then begins a new story in four parts, in which we meet Ren, a woman who has left her home after a military coup and gone to live in the mountains. She is virtually self-sufficient apart from occasional exchanges with a man named Barlow and his son. We don't know exactly why she fled or what the coup was about, but the man alerts her to the presence of soldiers searching the mountainside for something, a group of four lead by a young woman referred to as Harker. They are in search of evidence of a myth and they will make Ren suffer until she divulges what she knows and leads them to its source.
In the second part, we go back in time to a seaside settlement in the South and meet Zoe and her Aunt, just as the girl is being initiated into the village tradition of ink gathering, a secret trade that is shared with no one. A Northener arrives seeking knowledge and is spurned, he turns towards destructive means and with everything that follows Zoe leaves.
The story returns to Harker and her troops and their journey, here I felt the story waned, a few connections had been made and the interwoven nature of the parts revealed, but neither the landscape nor the characters gain traction, Harker is determined in her mission, but self-destructive in her nature and has lost whatever empathy she ever had. Her previous actions are hard to understand.
Most of Arnott's characters are women and I did find myself pausing early on and wondering why he chose to inhabit so many female characters, the unlucky farmer, the woman surviving in the mountain, the leader of the army group. I made a note when this thought arose, because these women were all acting in ways often attributed to men, Harker uses brutal tactics to change Ren's mind; Ren has abandoned her son.
In an interview Arnott says it made more sense for him to portray those characters as women, because it required them to demonstrate resilience, something he considered more of a female trait within the story. Because they were spending a lot of time in the wilderness, he thought writing them as male characters would come across as cliché, referring to woman as having:
"that gentle, firm, methodical way of dealing with problems as opposed to letting anger and frustration rise to the surface"
The author says he wasn't trying to convey a particular message, but the situations he puts his characters in and the familiarity of some of the climatic events that occur make it a thought provoking story, and I think it's all the better for not coming to any conclusion or moral, but for it to exist as a catalyst for discussion of those various controversial situations that arise.
My favourite character and the one we spend too little time with was the rain heron, who spends most of the book hidden away, but listening to Arnott talk about his inspiration behind the bird, who had magical qualities and was a kind of anti-hero, made me wish that the bird had had more of a presence. His point there was that in nature, birds and animals are really not interested in humanity, not in the way humans are interested in them, acting from instinct not from consideration. That said, he has created a creature that readers are indeed likely to be fascinated with!...more
Naondel is the name of the ship that will bring the First women to the island of Menos. We have already been on that island in the first book of this Naondel is the name of the ship that will bring the First women to the island of Menos. We have already been on that island in the first book of this series, Maresi, where there have been mentions of the names of those who came here first. We know about the safety of this island, a place from which men are forbidden to set foot and we know from the stories of those who are on the island of the menace that exists elsewhere.
Now we go back to the beginning, to when these women lived in their communities, with their families, how it was that they came to be together, virtually imprisoned within the same household, there due to the desire of one man, and what it was that drives them ultimately to leave everything behind and seek refuge on this island.
Thus, most of the novel is spent in the oppressive diarahesi the place where the women, Iskan the Vizier has brought into the palace of Ohaddin, to serve and service him, are confined. It is an idle life of entrapment, where they have no power over their lives or of their children, reduced to objects of one man's desire.
For Kabira, this place was once her home, long before its inhabitants were eliminated, its geography changed to suit the man who made her his wife. She had powers that came from Anji, something he would steal from her and misuse, bringing decades of torment.
As each woman joins the diarhesi, with their unique skills and talent, though they initially are weakened by this small life they are bound to; unbeknown to them, they are being prepared for something greater, that will pave the way for others, allowing them too to dream of escape, to a place where women can be safe, healed, educated and thrive.
The darkness these women endure, the evil that is perpetuated by their ruler, is only alleviated by the foreknowledge that we already know these women will eventually escape it. So we read in anticipation of that event, in the meantime getting to know each of them and the powers they had before they were enslaved.
And so we learn the stories of Kabira the First Mother, Clararas who led their flight, Garai the High Priestess, Estegi the servant and second Mother, Orseola the Dreamweaver, Sulani the Brave, Daera the first Rose, and Iona, who was lost.
There are few whom I have loved in my overlong life. Two of them I have betrayed. One I have killed. ONe has turned her back on me. And one has held my death in his hand. There is no beauty in my past. No goodness. Yet I am forcing myself to look back and recall Ohaddin, the palace, and all that came to passe therein.
Red Abbey is situated on the island Menos, run by women, a kind of educational refuge that has elements of sounding like a boarding school and a conveRed Abbey is situated on the island Menos, run by women, a kind of educational refuge that has elements of sounding like a boarding school and a convent. On the mainland some are not even sure if it myth or reality, but we learn that Maresi was sent there by her family during 'Hunger Winter' and the abundance of food and care she is given means it is a place she absolutely adores.
There are many reasons why a girl might come to the island. Sometimes poor families from the coast lands send a daughter here because they can not provide for her. Sometimes a family notice that their daughter has a sharp and enquiring mind and want to give her the best education a woman can get. Sometimes sick and disabled girls come here because they know the sisters can give them the best possible care...Sometimes girls come as runaways... Girls who show a thirst for knowledge in cultures where women are not allowed to know or say anything. In these lands, rumour of the Abbey's existence lives in women's songs and and forbidden folk tales told only in whispers, away from enemy ears. Nobody talks openly about our island but most people have heard of it anyway.
There are two maps at the front of the book, one of Red Abbey, a walled area showing various buildings, such as Novice House, Knowledge House, Body's Spring, Temple of the Rose, named steps and courtyards and a map of the island drawn by 'Sister 0 in the second year of the reign of our thirty-second mother, based on the original by Garai of the Blood in the reign of First Mother'
As the novel opens a ship is sighted and the girls are joined by Jai, who becomes shadow to Maresi, it is clear she has been traumatised by an experience and continues to live in fear, believing that what she ran from will not relent until she is found; eventually the girls stories become known.
Most of the first two thirds is made up of understanding their daily life, they are being educated both intellectually and develop a strong connection to nature. The community is able to survive and thrive due to their sustainable harvesting of a red dye from blood snails.
Men are forbidden on the island and when a threat seems imminent it requires the women to use all their knowledge and resources and it is as this happens that the girls begin to discover their unique talents.
Described as a tale of sisterhood, survival and fighting against the odds, I chose this because it sounded like an empowering read for young women/adolescents and because it has been imagined and written by a woman from another culture/language. Maria Turtschaninoff is from Finland and this book is the first in a trilogy, also described as feminist fantasy.
I really enjoyed the story and characters and the community created on the island, it reminded me a little of Madeleine Miller's Circe, who also lives on an island, only she is mostly alone, but it has that similar utopian feeling of the desire to create a nurturing environment where women lives in harmony with nature and has access to education and knowledge, without the demands of men....more
The last nonfiction book I read was also set in Morocco (at the time referred to as the Spanish Sahara) written by a foreign woman liviReality bites.
The last nonfiction book I read was also set in Morocco (at the time referred to as the Spanish Sahara) written by a foreign woman living openly with her boyfriend, it couldn't be more in contrast with what I've just read here - although Sanmao does encounter women living within the oppressive system that is at work in this collection.
In Morocco the ban on 'fornication', or zina, isn't just a moral injunction. Article 490 of the penal code prescribes 'imprisonment of between one month and one year [for] all persons of opposite sexes, who, not being united by the bonds of marriage, pursue sexual relations'. According to article 489, all 'preferential or unnatural behaviour between two persons of the same sex will be punished by between six months and three years' imprisonment'.
Leïla Slimani interviews women who responded to her after the publication of her first novel Adèle, a character she describes as 'a rather extreme metaphor for the sexual experience of young Moroccan women'; it was a book that provoked a dialogue, many women wanted to have that conversation with her, felt safe doing so, inspiring her to collect those stories and publish them for that reason, to provoke a national conversation.
Novels have a magical way of forging a very intimate connection between writers and their readers, of toppling the barriers of shame and mistrust. My hours with those women were very special. And its their stories I have tried to give back: the impassioned testimonies of a time and its suffering.
It's both a discomforting read, to encounter this knowledge and hear this testimony for the first time, and encouraging if it means that a space is being created that allows the conversation to happen at all, but overall it leaves a feeling of disempowerment, having glimpsed the tip of another nation's patriarchal iceberg. Article 489 is not drawn from sharia or any other religious source, it is in fact identical to the French penal code's former article 331, repealed in 1982. They are laws inherited directly from the French protectorate.
In a conversation with Egyptian feminist and author Mona Eltahawy about the tussle between the freedom desired and the shackles forced upon women, Eltahawy responded by using words attributed to the great American abolitionist Harriet Tubman, who devoted her life to persuading slaves to flee the plantations and claim their freedom.
She is meant to have said: "I freed a thousand slaves. I could have freed a thousand more if only they knew were slaves." Emancipation, Eltahawy told me, is first about raising awareness. If women haven't fully understood the state of inferiority in which they are kept, they will do nothing but perpetuate it.
Women are stepping out of isolation and sharing their stories everywhere, finding solidarity in that first step, sharing in a safe space, being heard, realising they are not alone.
Another excellent example of Elena Ferrante's ability to zoom in close, with intensity into the subconscious of her protagonist, this time through theAnother excellent example of Elena Ferrante's ability to zoom in close, with intensity into the subconscious of her protagonist, this time through the lens of a girl entering adolescence.
From the opening pages, as she overhears a random comment from her father, it expands in her mind and overtakes her physically and mentally like a disease, affecting her mind, causing her to act in certain ways, that to the reader seem irrational, but to the hormone affected adolescent everything is magnified and causes her to imagine, lash out, withdraw, have moments of tenderness followed by hate and indifference.
It is a roller coaster of emotions and a river of consciousness as we ride along, wondering who is going to survive these years unscathed.
I can't really talk about the novel in the singular as I see her individual novels now as a tapestry of different women characters in various stages of their life, the two friends in My Brilliant Friend, the daughter in Troubling Love and the betrayed wife of The Days of Abandonment.
As the novel nears the end, it reads almost like a thriller, as we can see she is moving towards adulthood, her behaviours are less volatile, she feels less of a need to respond so violently, and yet, there is the danger that now she is becoming one of them - an adult -those who hide their behaviours behind lies....more
A French novella that I read in an afternoon, we accompany our Parisian protagonist on a train journey towards Lake Baikal, which does on a local traiA French novella that I read in an afternoon, we accompany our Parisian protagonist on a train journey towards Lake Baikal, which does on a local train, have spontaneously decided to go and find out why her friend Gyl is no longer writing letters.
For the first six months he had written often, telling me he had time to go fishing for omul in the lake and make kites for children. And the, silence.
Once on the train and it's a long journey, she has time to think recall their friendship, they were lovers many years ago and while she holds no flame for him, the journey allows to reflect on the highs and lows of that union. Though she spend no time wondering about what she might encounter or even how she is going to find him.
I knew that the return trip is the real journey, when it floods the days that follow, so much so that it creates the prolonged sensation of one time getting lost in another, of one space losing itself in another.
What she does spend time thinking of, is her recent past and another spontaneous decision to knock on the door of a neighbour whom she has never seen, an elderly woman. The door is opened by a young girl and peering inside she sees the older woman sitting on a red sofa by a window. As an excuse for her curiosity she mentions there might be noise as she has people coming for dinner that evening. The woman asks her a favour in return for the anticipated inconvenience.
With a big smile, she retorted that she would rather we proceeded differently: for all past dinners, for this one and the next ones, she would only ask in exchange that I occasionally read to her a little, if I had the time.
And so we meet some bold French female heroines of the past, sadly a number of whom for their feminist inclinations in the wrong era, end their lives at the guillotine.
"Tell me again about that gutsy girl again," Clémence Barrot would sometimes ask about Marion de Faouët and her army of brigands. She had, just as I did, a real affection for that child who had not grown up to become a lady's companion despite all the efforts of the Jaffré sisters. NO, she became a leader of men instead, an avenger of Brittany which had been starved during the 1740's.
While these stream of consciousness thoughts pass through her mind, various locals enter and exit the train. She is immersed in the language of the area and in two books she has brought with her, Dostoevsky'sWar and Peace and a book by the philosopher Jankélévitch. Becoming particularly interested in one man whom she can't communicate with - Igor - she imagines things about him from the little she observes and seeks him out more than one time when he disappears.
I had just read 'There are encounters with people completely unknown to us who trigger our interest at first sight, suddenly, before a word has even been said..."
It's an engaging read considering not much happens, but there is just the right mix of action and reflection and indeed, by the end a build up to a couple of dramas and quiet resolution.
I really enjoyed the read and was surprised at how captivated I was by the journey. I do love long train journey's and hers was such an indulgent whim, that the suspension of what she will encounter is enough to keep the reader interested, but the relationship with her elderly neighbour provides a brilliant counterpoint and empathic adjunct and becomes the more significant event to the 'thousands of miles' distraction....more
This novel is told in chapters about paired characters, so it stops and starts as we leave one pair and move on to the next. There doesn't appear to bThis novel is told in chapters about paired characters, so it stops and starts as we leave one pair and move on to the next. There doesn't appear to be any connection between the lives so the stories are quite different which creates the effect of reading short stories of more than one chapter.
As these lives move forward, the theme of separation becomes apparent, its inherent trauma manifesting in different ways in these lives.
A mother is told she is not a biological match for her son who needs a kidney, questioning their relationship, a married couple discover a devastating fact when they seek their original birth certificates, one they will be relentlessly and mercilessly pursued for. Siblings at their mother's deathbed learn the truth she never revealed to them in life.
And in some way none of them will ever know, but we will, there are connections, that they have been deprived of, for better or worse....more
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