This was the last Jenoff title that I read and my least favourite. However, it might just be because I read it last - her stories are very similar and I was less into this one.
This is a prequel of sorts to The Kommandant's Girl. It takes place shortly after World War I and begins in Paris where we meat Margot, a young German woman who has accompanied her father, the titular ambassador, to the conference of world leaders attempting to draw up the terms of the new Europe.
Margot has been educated by her father, a single parent, but coddled by him too. She spent the war in London and is reluctant to return to her fiancé in Berlin who is a wounded war veteran. Instead she is excited by the new friends she has made - Krysia, a Polish pianist, and Georg, a German naval officer who is part of the German delegation.
Through these friendships Margot is introduced into a web of spying as well as various visions of the future of Germany. Georg begins broken by the war, especially the loss of his brother, but hopeful for a peaceful resolution to Germany's historical conflicts. When the terms of the armistice are negotiated, he becomes bitter and disillusioned, leaning toward the National Socialist party in the 1919 elections.
After webs of secrets about her father, Krysia, her fiancé, and Georg are revealed, Margot learns the best path will be to strike out on her own and find herself.
Both Krysia and Georg reappear in Jenoff's first novel which takes place during World War II.
While not the best of her books, I was still entertained and not sorry I read this one.
Saturday, January 6, 2018
Wednesday, January 3, 2018
Winter Break Reading
I managed to get through several novels over the winter break - one of them was excellent, the rest were fine. I'll start with the best.
The Heart's Invisible Furies by John Boyne
I really liked this book - it followed the life of Cyril Avery from his birth in 1945 to his old age. As his adoptive parents told him at every opportunity, he was not a real Avery. Rather he was born to an unwed teenaged mother and placed for adoption by a hunchbacked Redemptorist nun. The story of Cyril's life really encapsulates the history of Ireland - in particular the significant influence of the Catholic church.
First, Cyril's mother is publicly humiliated by her local parish priest and banished from their town when her parents become aware of her pregnancy. Of course, the father, who does give her a few pounds for her trouble, remains anonymous and suffers no consequences. She hops a bus for Dublin where she befriends a young man and goes to live with him and his "roommate". She is totally oblivious to the fact that they are lovers until this is brought to her attention in a startling and tragic way. She manages to find a job serving tea at the House of Commons by pretending to be married (and with some luck as she is hired by a woman who had suffered similar circumstances). As she planned to give the baby up for adoption, she returns to work after his birth and holds this job until retirement.
Cyril meanwhile grows up with very odd parents. His adoptive mother is a novelist who abhors any commercial success; his adoptive father is a banker who goes to prison more than once for tax evasion. While not cruel, they are rather neglectful and Cyril's childhood is lonely. As a young boy he meets another young boy (the son of his father's lawyer) and develops a life-long crush on him. At this point he realizes he is gay.
I don't want to give up too much but the novel follows Cyril's life from Dublin, to Amsterdam to New York and back to Dublin. We see his relationship with his adoptive parents, his friend and her sister who he eventually marries (under societal pressure and without much success), the man with whom he has a healthy relationship and his birth mother who keeps popping up in his life without his knowledge of who she really is. We also see the slowly changing norms in Ireland with respect to religion, unwed mothers and homosexuality. My only criticism was the number of times people kept crossing each other's paths coincidentally - it made it seem like only about a dozen people lived in Ireland. But, that didn't detract from my overall enjoyment of the book.
Lilac Girls by Martha Hall Kelly
This was also a very interesting book. In alternating chapters it tells the story of three women caught up in World War II in very different ways. Caroline Ferriday is a New York socialite who works at the French consulate. When the war breaks out she struggles to continue to help the poor orphans in France and to integrate the influx of refugees into New York. She has also fallen in love with a married French man and tries desperately to get him to stay in New York. When he does not she constantly worries about him as his wife is Jewish and they get taken to camps.
Kasia Kuzmerick is a Polish teenager who gets deeply involved in the resistance movement and eventually ends up in Ravensbruck, the Nazi concentration camp for women. She is riddled with guilt as she feels it is her fault that her sister, mother and boyfriend's sister have been arrested with her.
Herta Oberheuser is a struggling German doctor who desperately wants to be a surgeon but is stopped at every turn as the Nazis feel real German women belong at home. That is until she applies to work at Ravensbruck and gets caught up in the horrific experiments being conducted on inmates there - including Kasia. It is a testament to the writing that you are never sure how much Herta believes in what she is doing and how much she just needs to work to survive and support her mother.
The book follows the war time experiences of the women and ultimately how each of them fared during the war and dealt with the consequences of it.
A Nantucket Christmas by Nancy Thayer
I read this one in the span of one airplane ride. It was typical Thayer Nantucket writing except that it took place in winter. Nicole is an island newcomer and a second wife who must welcome her pregnant, adult step daughter, son-in-law and grandson to the family's Christmas celebration. Her step daughter is adamantly opposed to her father's remarriage and unrealistically dreams of a reconciliation between her parents. Angst and hilarity ensues when the family, including eventually the ex-wife, spend Christmas together. The weirdest part of the book were certain chapters written from the perspective of a dog abandoned on the island by a summer family and discovered by Nicole's grandson. Of course there is the expected happy ending.
Home Again by Kristin Hannah
Madelaine Hillyard is a very successful heart surgeon but has struggled more in her personal life. She is the single mother of a teenager, Lina, who is going through a rebellious stage. While Madelaine has the steadfast assistance of her priest friend, Francis DeMarco, his brother Angel (and Lina's father) rode out of town shortly after he found out Madelaine was pregnant. Lina has not been told who her father is and desperately wishes to know. Madelaine is able to keep it a secret until Angel, now a famous movie star, ends up back in town in need of a heart transplant. The book deals with the bittersweet reunion between Angel, Madelaine and Francis as well as the introduction of Lina to her father. While the ending is hopeful, there are some sad parts to get through first.
Three Wishes by Liane Moriarty
An easy read Australian book about triplets Lyn, Cat and Gemma. It starts with a scene in a restaurant on their birthday which ends with Cat stabbing pregnant Gemma with a fork. The book then goes back in time by several months to explain why that happened - with occasional forays even further back in time to the girls' childhood, teenage and earlier adult years. While we learn about their parents' marriage and divorce, their grandparents and their own marriages, what the book is ultimately about is the relationship amongst the girls and how their personalities are shaped by this relationship.
I won't go into the story as it's not a deep novel or anything, but it is an entertaining enough read, especially on vacation. There are certainly several humorous scenes.
The Things We Cherished and The Diplomat's Wife by Pam Jenoff
I have recently discovered Jenoff (actually, rediscovered as I had read The Kommandant's Girl some time ago) and when I was looking for something to read on vacation that didn't have a waiting list at the library I picked up these two. They were both grabbed me enough that I read each of them in a day.
The Things we Cherished starts with two human rights lawyers, Charlotte and Jack, who are called upon to defend an accused Nazi war criminal. Their client refuses to defend himself claiming only that proof of his innocence can be found in an old clock. So Charlotte and Jack travel through Europe trying to get their hands on the clock. Alternating chapters tell the history of the clock so we slowly piece together where it's been and why it's so important. My only criticism of the book is the story of the clock was so complex that at times I was left confused - and because I was reading an e-book it was hard to look back for clarification. But that was not enough to ruin the book for me.
The Diplomat's Wife is actually a sequel to The Kommandant's Girl, told from a different perspective. This book starts with Marta who is a prisoner in a concentration camp being kept alive so she can be tortured to obtain information about the resistance movement. We learn later that she worked in the resistance with Emma who was the main character in the other book. Marta is liberated by an American soldier and sent to recuperate at a DP camp in Salzburg. There she runs into the soldier again and they slowly fall in love. However on the night that he must leave the camp Marta's good friend dies and a friendly nurse gives her the friend's visa to England. She encourages Marta to use it both to escape and to personally bring the news of her friend's death to her beloved aunt who had sponsored her visa.
Before she makes it to England she gets waylaid in Paris where she again runs into the American soldier and they get engaged. As the war has ended by then they make plans to meet up in a few weeks time in London. So Marta travels to London where she stays with her friend's aunt and when her fiancé dies in a plane crash on the way to meet her she takes a job with and eventually marries a British diplomat.
The British foreign office discovers they have a double agent working for them and feeding confidential information to Russia and enlist Marta (who was working as a secretary) to help find the culprit as she has the necessary contacts from her days in the Polish underground. She travels to Czechoslovakia to find the answers - with extremely surprising results.
The Heart's Invisible Furies by John Boyne
I really liked this book - it followed the life of Cyril Avery from his birth in 1945 to his old age. As his adoptive parents told him at every opportunity, he was not a real Avery. Rather he was born to an unwed teenaged mother and placed for adoption by a hunchbacked Redemptorist nun. The story of Cyril's life really encapsulates the history of Ireland - in particular the significant influence of the Catholic church.
First, Cyril's mother is publicly humiliated by her local parish priest and banished from their town when her parents become aware of her pregnancy. Of course, the father, who does give her a few pounds for her trouble, remains anonymous and suffers no consequences. She hops a bus for Dublin where she befriends a young man and goes to live with him and his "roommate". She is totally oblivious to the fact that they are lovers until this is brought to her attention in a startling and tragic way. She manages to find a job serving tea at the House of Commons by pretending to be married (and with some luck as she is hired by a woman who had suffered similar circumstances). As she planned to give the baby up for adoption, she returns to work after his birth and holds this job until retirement.
Cyril meanwhile grows up with very odd parents. His adoptive mother is a novelist who abhors any commercial success; his adoptive father is a banker who goes to prison more than once for tax evasion. While not cruel, they are rather neglectful and Cyril's childhood is lonely. As a young boy he meets another young boy (the son of his father's lawyer) and develops a life-long crush on him. At this point he realizes he is gay.
I don't want to give up too much but the novel follows Cyril's life from Dublin, to Amsterdam to New York and back to Dublin. We see his relationship with his adoptive parents, his friend and her sister who he eventually marries (under societal pressure and without much success), the man with whom he has a healthy relationship and his birth mother who keeps popping up in his life without his knowledge of who she really is. We also see the slowly changing norms in Ireland with respect to religion, unwed mothers and homosexuality. My only criticism was the number of times people kept crossing each other's paths coincidentally - it made it seem like only about a dozen people lived in Ireland. But, that didn't detract from my overall enjoyment of the book.
Lilac Girls by Martha Hall Kelly
This was also a very interesting book. In alternating chapters it tells the story of three women caught up in World War II in very different ways. Caroline Ferriday is a New York socialite who works at the French consulate. When the war breaks out she struggles to continue to help the poor orphans in France and to integrate the influx of refugees into New York. She has also fallen in love with a married French man and tries desperately to get him to stay in New York. When he does not she constantly worries about him as his wife is Jewish and they get taken to camps.
Kasia Kuzmerick is a Polish teenager who gets deeply involved in the resistance movement and eventually ends up in Ravensbruck, the Nazi concentration camp for women. She is riddled with guilt as she feels it is her fault that her sister, mother and boyfriend's sister have been arrested with her.
Herta Oberheuser is a struggling German doctor who desperately wants to be a surgeon but is stopped at every turn as the Nazis feel real German women belong at home. That is until she applies to work at Ravensbruck and gets caught up in the horrific experiments being conducted on inmates there - including Kasia. It is a testament to the writing that you are never sure how much Herta believes in what she is doing and how much she just needs to work to survive and support her mother.
The book follows the war time experiences of the women and ultimately how each of them fared during the war and dealt with the consequences of it.
A Nantucket Christmas by Nancy Thayer
I read this one in the span of one airplane ride. It was typical Thayer Nantucket writing except that it took place in winter. Nicole is an island newcomer and a second wife who must welcome her pregnant, adult step daughter, son-in-law and grandson to the family's Christmas celebration. Her step daughter is adamantly opposed to her father's remarriage and unrealistically dreams of a reconciliation between her parents. Angst and hilarity ensues when the family, including eventually the ex-wife, spend Christmas together. The weirdest part of the book were certain chapters written from the perspective of a dog abandoned on the island by a summer family and discovered by Nicole's grandson. Of course there is the expected happy ending.
Home Again by Kristin Hannah
Madelaine Hillyard is a very successful heart surgeon but has struggled more in her personal life. She is the single mother of a teenager, Lina, who is going through a rebellious stage. While Madelaine has the steadfast assistance of her priest friend, Francis DeMarco, his brother Angel (and Lina's father) rode out of town shortly after he found out Madelaine was pregnant. Lina has not been told who her father is and desperately wishes to know. Madelaine is able to keep it a secret until Angel, now a famous movie star, ends up back in town in need of a heart transplant. The book deals with the bittersweet reunion between Angel, Madelaine and Francis as well as the introduction of Lina to her father. While the ending is hopeful, there are some sad parts to get through first.
Three Wishes by Liane Moriarty
An easy read Australian book about triplets Lyn, Cat and Gemma. It starts with a scene in a restaurant on their birthday which ends with Cat stabbing pregnant Gemma with a fork. The book then goes back in time by several months to explain why that happened - with occasional forays even further back in time to the girls' childhood, teenage and earlier adult years. While we learn about their parents' marriage and divorce, their grandparents and their own marriages, what the book is ultimately about is the relationship amongst the girls and how their personalities are shaped by this relationship.
I won't go into the story as it's not a deep novel or anything, but it is an entertaining enough read, especially on vacation. There are certainly several humorous scenes.
The Things We Cherished and The Diplomat's Wife by Pam Jenoff
I have recently discovered Jenoff (actually, rediscovered as I had read The Kommandant's Girl some time ago) and when I was looking for something to read on vacation that didn't have a waiting list at the library I picked up these two. They were both grabbed me enough that I read each of them in a day.
The Things we Cherished starts with two human rights lawyers, Charlotte and Jack, who are called upon to defend an accused Nazi war criminal. Their client refuses to defend himself claiming only that proof of his innocence can be found in an old clock. So Charlotte and Jack travel through Europe trying to get their hands on the clock. Alternating chapters tell the history of the clock so we slowly piece together where it's been and why it's so important. My only criticism of the book is the story of the clock was so complex that at times I was left confused - and because I was reading an e-book it was hard to look back for clarification. But that was not enough to ruin the book for me.
The Diplomat's Wife is actually a sequel to The Kommandant's Girl, told from a different perspective. This book starts with Marta who is a prisoner in a concentration camp being kept alive so she can be tortured to obtain information about the resistance movement. We learn later that she worked in the resistance with Emma who was the main character in the other book. Marta is liberated by an American soldier and sent to recuperate at a DP camp in Salzburg. There she runs into the soldier again and they slowly fall in love. However on the night that he must leave the camp Marta's good friend dies and a friendly nurse gives her the friend's visa to England. She encourages Marta to use it both to escape and to personally bring the news of her friend's death to her beloved aunt who had sponsored her visa.
Before she makes it to England she gets waylaid in Paris where she again runs into the American soldier and they get engaged. As the war has ended by then they make plans to meet up in a few weeks time in London. So Marta travels to London where she stays with her friend's aunt and when her fiancé dies in a plane crash on the way to meet her she takes a job with and eventually marries a British diplomat.
The British foreign office discovers they have a double agent working for them and feeding confidential information to Russia and enlist Marta (who was working as a secretary) to help find the culprit as she has the necessary contacts from her days in the Polish underground. She travels to Czechoslovakia to find the answers - with extremely surprising results.
Tuesday, December 12, 2017
The Winter Guest by Pam Jenoff
I decided to pick this up since I had enjoyed The Orphan's Tale, and I was not disappointed. Again Jenoff tells a somewhat different Holocaust story which was inspired by real events.
Here we follow 18 year old identical twins, Helena and Ruth, who are caring for their 3 younger siblings after the death of their father and the institutionalization of their mother who is suffering from both cancer and some form of dementia. Helena and Ruth are doing their best to keep the family together in a small town outside of Krakow during the Second World War. At the start of the book the war has not really reached their town (though the food shortages have), but slowly their lives are more and more impacted by it.
Helena finds an American paratrooper who is stranded outside their village and as she nurses him back to health she falls in love with him. She is also the "brave" sister who ventures to Krakow to visit their mother (and learns long buried secrets about her), witnessing the black market, the Polish underground and the liquidation of Krakow's Jewish quarter while she is there. Ruth has always been the "pretty" and "maternal" sister so when she eventually discovers Helena has a man in her life she becomes very jealous.
This jealousy leads to a rift between the sisters which ultimately has catastrophic consequences for the family and the American soldier. The book is ultimately interesting because of the relationships between Helena and Ruth, Helena and the soldier and both twins and the younger siblings. It also shows how different personality traits become strengths in times of war.
While this was not the best book I've ever read, it was enjoyable and suspenseful such that I really wanted to finish it.
Here we follow 18 year old identical twins, Helena and Ruth, who are caring for their 3 younger siblings after the death of their father and the institutionalization of their mother who is suffering from both cancer and some form of dementia. Helena and Ruth are doing their best to keep the family together in a small town outside of Krakow during the Second World War. At the start of the book the war has not really reached their town (though the food shortages have), but slowly their lives are more and more impacted by it.
Helena finds an American paratrooper who is stranded outside their village and as she nurses him back to health she falls in love with him. She is also the "brave" sister who ventures to Krakow to visit their mother (and learns long buried secrets about her), witnessing the black market, the Polish underground and the liquidation of Krakow's Jewish quarter while she is there. Ruth has always been the "pretty" and "maternal" sister so when she eventually discovers Helena has a man in her life she becomes very jealous.
This jealousy leads to a rift between the sisters which ultimately has catastrophic consequences for the family and the American soldier. The book is ultimately interesting because of the relationships between Helena and Ruth, Helena and the soldier and both twins and the younger siblings. It also shows how different personality traits become strengths in times of war.
While this was not the best book I've ever read, it was enjoyable and suspenseful such that I really wanted to finish it.
Sunday, December 10, 2017
Demi-Gods by Eliza Robertson
This was a really weird book though not that long so I stuck it out until the end. It starts in the 1950s when Willa's mother's new boyfriend brings his two sons to their Salt Spring Island summer home. Actually the boyfriend is not so new - Willa's mother had an affair with him while her father was away at war. They started to spend more time together once Willa's father left.
Willa's older sister Joan falls for the older son, Kenneth, which leaves nine year old Willa to pair off with eleven year old Patrick. Patrick is a sociopath - he starts with burning moth wings under a magnifying glass, then beheads rabbits. As they age, Patrick and Willa's encounters become more and more sexually charged, but always very bizarre.
While Willa actually only encounters Patrick about 6 times over the course of their lives, you can tell it impacts her relationships forever. What is more odd is based on what you can tell, Patrick lived a fairly normal life when he was not with Willa. It seemed they brought out the worst in each other.
The book moves over time through their encounters on Salt Spring Island and in San Diego where the boys reside with their mother most of the time. Their last encounter is on a sailboat excursion which ends tragically (I won't reveal how). While it is a typically weird encounter, at least Willa found her strength that time and had the upper hand.
All in all I wouldn't really recommend this book - it left me feeling a bit disgusted by human behaviour.
Willa's older sister Joan falls for the older son, Kenneth, which leaves nine year old Willa to pair off with eleven year old Patrick. Patrick is a sociopath - he starts with burning moth wings under a magnifying glass, then beheads rabbits. As they age, Patrick and Willa's encounters become more and more sexually charged, but always very bizarre.
While Willa actually only encounters Patrick about 6 times over the course of their lives, you can tell it impacts her relationships forever. What is more odd is based on what you can tell, Patrick lived a fairly normal life when he was not with Willa. It seemed they brought out the worst in each other.
The book moves over time through their encounters on Salt Spring Island and in San Diego where the boys reside with their mother most of the time. Their last encounter is on a sailboat excursion which ends tragically (I won't reveal how). While it is a typically weird encounter, at least Willa found her strength that time and had the upper hand.
All in all I wouldn't really recommend this book - it left me feeling a bit disgusted by human behaviour.
Friday, December 8, 2017
The Orphan's Tale by Pam Jenoff
This book is based on an interesting premise and, in the author's note at the end of the book I see she took certain aspects from historical facts.
In 1994 Noa is a 16 year old Dutch girl who gets pregnant following a brief relationship with an occupying Nazi soldier. When her shame is discovered her father sends her away. On a train she meets a German woman who suggests, with her "Aryan" features she would be welcomed at a home for unwed mothers in Germany. She goes there to give birth to a "child of the Reich". But, when the baby is born, he has dark features and Not falls in love with him instantly. However, the doctor and nurse in charge tear him from her arms and she never sees him again. When she has nowhere to go she ends up working as a cleaner in a railway station nearby.
One evening Noa hears unusual sounds coming from a railroad car waiting on the tracks. She sneaks over and finds a car full of Jewish babies who have been separated from their families, many are already dead from the cold and the others are obviously headed to concentration camps. Without much thought she grabs one of the babies and runs away from him. According to the author, this boxcar of "unknown children" really existed.
While running away Noa and the baby who she names Theo collapse in the snow and are rescued by the clown from a nearby circus and taken back to the circus. The kindly head of the circus takes them in. There Noa meets and eventually befriends Astrid, a Jewish woman who is hiding in plain sight at the circus. She grew up the only daughter of a multi-generational Jewish circus family where she performed as an aerialist from a young age. As a young woman she married a German man and moved with him to Berlin. However as he rose in the Nazi party he was pressured into denouncing her and the marriage.
Cast out she returned to her home to find her family and all traces of the circus gone. So she turns to a rival non-Jewish circus that wintered across from her family's winter grounds. This kindly circus leader also takes her in, gives her a new name and a job and works hard to protect her from the Nazi regime. According to the author, there were many multi-generational Jewish circuses in Europe prior to the war which were for the most part eliminated by the Nazis. It is also the case that certain non-Jewish circuses were willing hide Jews.
The novel follows the story of Noa and Astrid who start out as bitter rivals and end up friends. There are many twists and turns surrounding Astrid's relationship with a Russian clown, Noa's with the son of a local Nazi sympathizing mayor in France, and close calls and ultimate tragedies involving the Nazis.
The epilogue gives us an idea of where most of the characters ended up - some fates surprising and others unhappy but realistic.
While this is not high brow literature it was an interesting read and a new take on Holocaust literature. I recommend it.
In 1994 Noa is a 16 year old Dutch girl who gets pregnant following a brief relationship with an occupying Nazi soldier. When her shame is discovered her father sends her away. On a train she meets a German woman who suggests, with her "Aryan" features she would be welcomed at a home for unwed mothers in Germany. She goes there to give birth to a "child of the Reich". But, when the baby is born, he has dark features and Not falls in love with him instantly. However, the doctor and nurse in charge tear him from her arms and she never sees him again. When she has nowhere to go she ends up working as a cleaner in a railway station nearby.
One evening Noa hears unusual sounds coming from a railroad car waiting on the tracks. She sneaks over and finds a car full of Jewish babies who have been separated from their families, many are already dead from the cold and the others are obviously headed to concentration camps. Without much thought she grabs one of the babies and runs away from him. According to the author, this boxcar of "unknown children" really existed.
While running away Noa and the baby who she names Theo collapse in the snow and are rescued by the clown from a nearby circus and taken back to the circus. The kindly head of the circus takes them in. There Noa meets and eventually befriends Astrid, a Jewish woman who is hiding in plain sight at the circus. She grew up the only daughter of a multi-generational Jewish circus family where she performed as an aerialist from a young age. As a young woman she married a German man and moved with him to Berlin. However as he rose in the Nazi party he was pressured into denouncing her and the marriage.
Cast out she returned to her home to find her family and all traces of the circus gone. So she turns to a rival non-Jewish circus that wintered across from her family's winter grounds. This kindly circus leader also takes her in, gives her a new name and a job and works hard to protect her from the Nazi regime. According to the author, there were many multi-generational Jewish circuses in Europe prior to the war which were for the most part eliminated by the Nazis. It is also the case that certain non-Jewish circuses were willing hide Jews.
The novel follows the story of Noa and Astrid who start out as bitter rivals and end up friends. There are many twists and turns surrounding Astrid's relationship with a Russian clown, Noa's with the son of a local Nazi sympathizing mayor in France, and close calls and ultimate tragedies involving the Nazis.
The epilogue gives us an idea of where most of the characters ended up - some fates surprising and others unhappy but realistic.
While this is not high brow literature it was an interesting read and a new take on Holocaust literature. I recommend it.
Sunday, December 3, 2017
All Grown Up by Jami Attenberg
This is a somewhat rambling first person narrative about Andrea, a woman in her late thirties to early forties. She is dissatisfied with her job, unsuccessful in finding love and disconnected from her family who is dealing with the tragedy of her terminally ill niece.
While she was a bit of a mess, the sections looking back in her past helped explain her - her father died of a heroin overdose when she was a teenager, after that her mother struggled financially, at one point hosting dinners to raise money where middle aged drug addicts came over to eat and pawed teenaged Andrea at the same time. She dropped out of art school because she didn't think she could handle the constant rejection, but doesn't enjoy working in advertising.
At times the book was confusing as it moved back and forth in time and it sometimes took reading a few pages of a new chapter to figure out when it was set. Characters also came and went in her life and I couldn't always tell what time period she was referring to.
All in all it wasn't a great book but it was an easy enough read about a screwed up life.
While she was a bit of a mess, the sections looking back in her past helped explain her - her father died of a heroin overdose when she was a teenager, after that her mother struggled financially, at one point hosting dinners to raise money where middle aged drug addicts came over to eat and pawed teenaged Andrea at the same time. She dropped out of art school because she didn't think she could handle the constant rejection, but doesn't enjoy working in advertising.
At times the book was confusing as it moved back and forth in time and it sometimes took reading a few pages of a new chapter to figure out when it was set. Characters also came and went in her life and I couldn't always tell what time period she was referring to.
All in all it wasn't a great book but it was an easy enough read about a screwed up life.
Saturday, December 2, 2017
Ghachar Ghochar by Vivek Shanbhag
This is a short little book that was interesting and easy to read. Originally written in 2013 in the Southern Indian language Kannada, it was only translated into English this year. While this author has written eight works of fiction, this is the first that was translated.
Ghachar Ghochar is a nonsense word invented by the narrator's wife's family to mean something tangled beyond repair, a knot that can't be untied. And it is an apt descriptor of the narrator's family (as an aside, we never learn his name as he describes the other members of his family in detail).
The narrator, his mother, father, sister and uncle lived in a lower class neighbourhood in Bangalore. His father sold coffee and tea, working long days and barely making ends meet. Despite this he managed to put his brother and both children through school. When he loses his job because his company decides to reorganize he invests his retirement payment in his brother's business venture, a spice wholesaler. The business takes off and the family moves from their tight quarters (the narrator's description of them is very vivid; I could really see the home, ants and all as he describes his mother's war against them). In their new home there is a bedroom for everyone and more furniture than necessary.
Upon graduating from school the narrator is given a job with the family business - he gets a hefty salary every month, but there is nothing for him to do so he spends his time drinking coffee and reading newspapers. When he eventually marries his wife is disappointed to learn his money is not really his own.
The narrator's father is also disillusioned with his brother's less than honest business dealings (there is a great scene when his company goons attend at the home of the sister's estranged husband to recover her jewelry). The family walks on eggshells with the father, fearful he will write a will giving away his half of the family business to charity.
All in all this is a well written, at times humorous, always believable portrait of a family and, in particular, the impact sudden wealth can have on the family members.
Ghachar Ghochar is a nonsense word invented by the narrator's wife's family to mean something tangled beyond repair, a knot that can't be untied. And it is an apt descriptor of the narrator's family (as an aside, we never learn his name as he describes the other members of his family in detail).
The narrator, his mother, father, sister and uncle lived in a lower class neighbourhood in Bangalore. His father sold coffee and tea, working long days and barely making ends meet. Despite this he managed to put his brother and both children through school. When he loses his job because his company decides to reorganize he invests his retirement payment in his brother's business venture, a spice wholesaler. The business takes off and the family moves from their tight quarters (the narrator's description of them is very vivid; I could really see the home, ants and all as he describes his mother's war against them). In their new home there is a bedroom for everyone and more furniture than necessary.
Upon graduating from school the narrator is given a job with the family business - he gets a hefty salary every month, but there is nothing for him to do so he spends his time drinking coffee and reading newspapers. When he eventually marries his wife is disappointed to learn his money is not really his own.
The narrator's father is also disillusioned with his brother's less than honest business dealings (there is a great scene when his company goons attend at the home of the sister's estranged husband to recover her jewelry). The family walks on eggshells with the father, fearful he will write a will giving away his half of the family business to charity.
All in all this is a well written, at times humorous, always believable portrait of a family and, in particular, the impact sudden wealth can have on the family members.
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