Monday, July 21, 2014

Review of A Thousand Splendid Suns


A Thousand Splendid Suns tells the story of Mariam and Laila. They differ a generation in age, but are united through time and actions beyond their control. Both live in Kabul, Afghanistan, during the rebellion against the Soviet Union and later on the suppression of the Taliban and you see through their eyes what this new era of rulers is doing to women in Afghanistan.

After reading a few excellent novels, I was sure to have picked another great one. The first half of the book didn't win me over though. It was nice to read that islamic women in Afghanistan used to be as educated as we are today, with female doctors, lawyers and such, but the book used too many stereotypes and orchestrated drama in an too orderly manner. It was too predictable what would happen when. I was almost convinced that I was just reading a romance novel taking place in a foreign land, but luckily the moment Laila is being wed to Mariam's husband every veil falls off and you get a glimpse of the harsh world in which most islamic women are being born. Being female is being born already a sinner in the men's eyes. They lack the respect they should have for their mothers, for their wives and the love for their daughters. A woman giving birth to a girl is enough for her husband to take offense.
Adding to that is that a man can do to his woman whatever they want. Law inforcement won't interfere with what happens in a marriage, as long as the man is the winning party. A woman can't even travel alone, or show her face in public. There are special  hospitals for women, but they don't have enough medicine or even anesthetic to threat the women who come there.

It hasn't always been like that. Laila grew up in a day and age when women were allowed to go to school and get an education. Her father told her that while under Soviet regime she should benefit from the chances they were granting. Badly enough in time the rebellion threw over the Soviet Union with the help of the US, which later on dropped Afghanistan like an old misused toy and Afghanistan tore itself apart, Kabul being shot and bombed apart. Laila lost her parents due to this war between different factions of the Mujahideen. She got to live with Rasheed and Mariam. In time she becomes Rasheed's wife because it's the safe choice to make. Mariam and Laila become friends over time, even allies against the brute nature of their husband. As the Taliban is making their way to Kabul, ending faction wars where they come, firstly everyone is greeting them with vigour until they lay down their laws...

Men shall wear beards, otherwise they will be beaten.
No singing,
No dancing,
Stealing once will cost you a hand, stealing again will cost you a foot. 
If you are muslim you must pray five times a day, if it's time to pray and you are caught doing something else you will be beaten
If you have another faith, don't practice it in public, or you will be beaten and imprisoned.
If you try to convert a muslim, you will be executed.

For the women:

You are forbidden to leave your home.
If you are caught without a male companion on the streets, you will be beaten and sent home.
You have to wear a burqa.
No jewellery
No make-up
No flattering clothes
You're not allowed to paint your finger nails, if you are caught doing so you will lose a finger.
You aren't allowed to laugh
You can't look a man in the eye.

These are just a few of the laws they're living by.

Mariam and Laila have to make heartbreaking choices in order to survive and be sure their children survive also. More than once I had tears in my eyes. It's a story of sacrifice in dire times.

Whatever you're opinion of this novel, you'll see the middle east in a different light as before. I still don't understand why the women living here in the western world are hiding their hair, because they shouldn't. They should wear it openly as a token for each woman who is denied their personal freedom, as an act of defiance for each act of repression against one of their own.
But other than that because it's still a personal choice for each woman, my eyes were opened that Afghanistan hasn't been as extreme as I have known it, especially in and around Kabul.

I'm giving this novel an 8 out of 10. It's lost a point because of being a bit predicable in the beginning.

Monday, July 14, 2014

Review of Zoo Station


This is a translation from Christiane F. Wir Kinder von Bahnhof Zoo. It's a German novel about a young child getting addicted to heroin. The novel is mainly written from the perspective of Christiane herself as she tells us how she became addicted and what she felt during. At some points in the novel there's an intermezzo where we can read a police report or the feelings of Christiane's mother who found out about her daughter's problem in the nick of time.

Christiane comes from a troubled family where money problems and physical violence almost are too cliché to be true. She escapes her troubles by trying to fit in with the crowd at her new home, Berlin. She soon figures out the harder you yell and the least fear you show, the better your reputation gets and she soon adapts. She's a young twelve year old as she smokes her first pot and soon evolves to pills like Valium, Excedrin and the like, combining uppers and downers to match the way she wants to feel. She as first impressed with the relaxed air the kids that are using have and she wants to be like them. At first the entire group is dead set against using heroin, or 'horse' as its slang word is, but very quickly one by one the kids are seduced into trying it once, first by snorting heroin and later on injecting the drug. Christiane is first scared of using and she actually stays free of drugs for over 2 months when she's on holiday in the countryside, but when she comes back she starts using it almost immediately almost as if she needs to catch up.
Parallel between her drug abuse is a romantic relation she has with another heroin addict, Detlef. They become a thing and they see themselves as rare because Detlef prostitutes himself to sell heroin for them both. This does change very quickly and Christiane herself starts prostituting herself at the age of 13. She holds of the actually having sex until she is well over 14, but in the end she does give in just to be able to have money for another shot.

During the novel she tries to kick the habit, being too naive. She almost keeps thinking that she can stay off the drugs when she's putting a needle to her skin.
As the novel winds down she's almost desperate for her golden shot because she becomes aware that the world that awaits her without heroin isn't as good as she is imagining and the world with heroin is killing her. Her one attempt at suicide fails and then her mother decided to ship her off to the countryside to get her away from the dangerous drugs scene.

All this is heartbreaking in its own. It's no wonder that I've read this novel almost in one go, but to think that's a true tale. The girl truly lived and is still living as far as I know. This gives you a little bit of comfort knowing that Christiane will be alright in the end, but the struggle she had to go through is tough to endure.
This is a tale that every beginning adolescent should have to read. The pull of drugs will be a lot less if they can see what it can lead to.

The book itself is written well, I never got the feeling that anything got dramatized for the sake of selling the book. In the end you almost get a feeling of try, fail, repeat as she goes through her different attempts at quitting heroin. The only thing that truly worked in the end was isolating her of her friends, who kept pulling her down. The title of the book refers to the place where she and her friends hung out while they we're addicted. They went there to score heroin, but also to pick up clients and get the money for it.

The sentence that kept me thinking most of all was the following.
Having the wrong ideals is better than having no ideals at all. 
Christiane says this while they are talking about Nazi germany. She doesn't entirely believe it herself, but she can see the solace of having something to live for, even if it's wrong.

I'm giving this novel 9 out of 10.

Thursday, July 10, 2014

Review of The World According to Garp


I'm going to take my time to write this review.
The world according to Garp is a novel that's changed my view of life. I haven't read many books like it and I'm saddened because Garp is a fictional character instead of someone truly alive.

Saying that I loved it, doesn't seem to say enough. I've lived this book, it crawled underneath my skin, in such severity that instead of wanting to know what happened and rushing through it, I actually had to close the book right before the accident. I just couldn't read on, knowing something bad was going to happen. I cried, I even had to find solace with my husband who does find it strange when I get so emotionally attached to a fictional world, but I loved Garp, I loved his family and knowing something bad was going to happen, knowing that he would feel hurt and guilty was too much for me and I didn't read another word for more than a day.

I started reading this novel while I was on vacation in Brittany, France. Huddled together with my family I started in it halfway my trip, just finished my other one and because of the broken e-reader, otherwise I might have pushed it further a little. I'm admitting that the title didn't quite sell me and the notion that almost everyone finds this a wonderful novel made me afraid that I wasn't going to like it. That has happened in the past and it's a serious letdown. It even momentarily destroys my faith in others opinions.

But enough about me, more about the novel.
The world according to Garp is a novel about a writer and his family and the normal life they're living. You might think it's a novel about lust, but it isn't, lust is only a means to express the Garp's anxieties of not knowing what the future will bring. Lust is a way to bring control in a life where control is nowhere to be seen. No one can tell what will happen tomorrow, not even what will happen in the next hour. Most of us think they can control the flow of their life, but we are subject to millions of flows and any one of them can interact with ours at any given time, even obliterate the path we might have put our minds to. Being flexible is a good thing to be when it comes to being alive, but once you have children, fear makes you rigid. The most overused phrase I can think of is 'There's nothing to fear but fear itself'. There's truth in that, but being a parent is having given your heart to something not able to take care of itself, we don't even believe that when our kids turn out to be adults and parents themselves that they can take care of themselves as well as we have.

Garp is scared for something happening to his children. He doesn't express that same fear towards his wife, but she's always been a rock in their midst. Helen tries to downtone his anxiety, as I sometimes have to do with my husband. Why I'm less scared than my husband, I don't know. I think I have more trust in the future, however naive that may be.
This novel is clearly written from a male perspective and I loved it for it. It tackles themes like feminist movements, transsexuals (as in In One Person) and how women are mostly living under the laws of their men, but all seen from a male point of view which gives such a beautiful scene I almost want to read this novel again, having just finished it. I think I'm in literary love with the writer in John Irving.

I'm not giving a summary of this novel per se, that would feel like trying to sum up someone's life when they've died. They did good, they did bad, they did the best they could, but most of all they did it because they believed in it. Garp will stay a part of my literary memory and he made me think about a few things in my own life. A novel that makes you feel is wonderful, but a novel that makes you think is almost one of a kind.

In the off chance that he would stumble upon this review, I sincerely want to thank John Irving for giving life to this novel. It's the best book I've read so far and I've read a lot of books already.
I also want to thank Esa, because it's due to his recommendation that I finally dug into it.

I'm giving this novel 11 out of 10. 

Monday, July 7, 2014

Review of 2001: A Space Odyssey


Who loves this movie? I do! Seriously wicked good movie.

Who loves the novel? Who has ever taken the time to read the novel? Well, I have and I loved it... so much more than I loved the movie which is hard to top.

Arthur C. Clarke has topped the screenplay he wrote together with Kubrick with a bright red cherry because when you read the novel and then watch the movie again, you experience it at such a new level of understanding it almost becomes tangible.

The science written about in 2001 is so nearly true, much of it is already a fact rather than fiction. He describes how we can get the news from everywhere in the world wherever we want it in a matter of seconds, which I believe we call the internet which we use on so many devices. I was mindstunned ( a lovely new word from Nathalie's dictionary) when I read a decription of what I would call a tablet or smartphone, in a book written in the 60's when we had computers the size of school buildings.

A brief description of 2001 is almost abundant since its adaptation is such a cult icon, but for those too young or maybe too ignorant to have seen this, I'll give a short summary.
2001 is about aliens trying to connect with the humans on earth. They do this in different stages of our evolution, beginning with ape men and ending with humans as we know them but with severely advanced science as we set on a journey to understand the meaning of the symbols left to us by the aliens.
As we travel across the universe we get to know the most famous villain of the sixties, HAL (which is derived from IBM). HAL is a computer who runs the ship and is equipped with a artificial intelligence that in the end leads him to corruption.
As the novel runs to its end, you'll get a psychedelic view of how interstellar travel could be possible if you have enough imagination to imagine the impossible.

I have a great fondness for novels that can stun me. 2001 delivered. I've never read a science fiction novel full of facts already true today and I felt like I had an insight view behind the movie's actions. It never bored and I would've finished it earlier if my e-reader didn't die on me. Luckily the library I attend had a copy and I was able to finish it. 2001 is the perfect recipe for a science fiction novel and I'm very curious of how the sequel is going to be.

Sunday, July 6, 2014

Review of About a boy


About a boy, some of you might remember the movie adaptation...
I've never been a huge fan of Hugh Grant but I've seen this. However I wasn't aware I had picked this novel until I had begun reading it. I read it in Dutch which  will explain why the title didn't hint me towards it being adapted already. 
Luckily for me it's been a quite a while since I've seen it and I couldn't remember much of it. It didn't leave a big impression on me back then either. 
But as with so many adaptation, the novel is much much better. 

Nick Hornby writes from a male perspective, both from the adult and the boy's point of view. 
Will Freeman, a careless man without any responsibilities or ties meets Marcus Brewer who's a boy on the verge of a family crisis. 
How they meet is a very hilarious situation because Will pretends to have a son in order to meet single mothers. Marcus being a twelve year old boy newly living in London and having trouble to adapt at school, turns to Will for advise because his mother is going through a personal crisis and isn't able to help him. 

Gradually Will learns what it is to be responsible and to care for another and Marcus learns how to be a normal teenager instead of overthinking it all. 

About a boy is written fluently. It's read very quickly and it never loses its pace. You want to know what happens to them and because it alternates between Will and Marcus you'll see the same situations but interpreted differently which makes it hilarious at times, but sad at others. 
Marcus is kindhearted and doesn't understand sarcasm, which makes him an odd match to Will whose main worries is how to kill time and avoid human connection other than in the bedroom. He's forced to come down from his solitary point of view to learn how to care for others. 

The story ends a bit ambiguous. On one side you have Will whose learned how to love and to care and that worrying is just part of life. On the other side you have Marcus who has shed his grownup worrying aside and is now being a normal teenager, instead of someone who wants to please others. 

I liked reading it, but it's a novel I'll soon forget too. I've finished it a week ago, and I already have trouble trying to find the feeling again which it gave me. Of course, I'm reading something so good I'm awestruck, which might contribute to the fact that About a boy has faded so quickly. 

I'm giving it a 7 out of 10. 

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