The Song of Achilles

From the book cover:
The legend begins...
Greece in the age of heroes. Patroclus, an awkward young prince, has been exiled to the kingdom of Phthia to be raised in the shadow of King Peleus and his golden son, Achilles. "The best of all the Greeks" - strong, beautiful, and the child of a goddess - Achilles is everything the shamed Patroclus is not. Yet despite their differences, the boys become steadfast companions. Their bond deepens as they grow into young men and become skilled in the arts of war and medicine - much to the displeasure and the fury of Achilles' mother, Thetis, a cruel sea goddess with a hatred for mortals.
When word comes that Helen of Sparta has been kidnapped, the men of Greece , bound by blood and oath, must lay siege to Troy in her name. Seduced by the promise of a glorious destiny, Achilles joins their cause, and torn between love and fear for his friend, Patroclus follows. Little do they know that the Fates will test them both as never before and demand a terrible sacrifice.

My  Review:
Madeline Miller's Song of Achilles is the winner of the 2012 Orange Prize for Fiction. Achilles is Ms. Miller first novel. It is based on Homer's  Illiad poem.

I really enjoyed reading this novel. It definitely a good book. It one of the stories that sparked my interest and sent me on to the world wide web to further investigate and get the back story on some of the people/gods mentioned.

I'm a bit surprised that Song of Achilles  won the Orange Prize. It seems like cheating, taking the plot of someone else's poem and developing it into a novel. Yes, Ms. Miller did bring the characters to life. Yes, her writing style did make this novel a pleasure to read, but still it doesn't seem fair to the other authors who actually developed their own plots.

Achilles is a historical fiction, one could argue that all historical fictions steal their plots from a story already written. What do you think? Am I overreacting?

I'm going to hold off on rating this book until I've read Homer's poem.

Orange July: Month in Review

I’m very pleased with the books that I read for Orange July. All but one made it onto my 5ers list of highly recommended reads.

The one that didn’t make it - Rebecca Wells’ Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood had too much hype. With it having been made into a movie several years ago, I was expecting something way better. The main plot driver (Sidda’s refusal to marry her fiancé because she feels like she doesn’t know how to love because of her mother’s abuse) feels overly contrived. I know that’s a weird thing to say about a fiction but unless I’m reading science fiction or fantasy, I like my novels to have a somewhat realistic plot.

About the Orange Prize

The Orange Prize for Fiction is a prestigious U.K. based award that celebrates full-length works of fiction written in English by female authors.

We Need to Talk About Kevin

We Need to Talk About Kevin is Lionel Shriver's seventh novel and winner of the 2005 Orange Prize for Fiction. We Need to Talk About Kevin was made into a film in 2011.

From the book cover:
Eva never wanted to be a mother - and certainly not the mother of the unlovable boy who murdered seven of his fellow high school students, a cafeteria worker, and a much-adored teacher who tried to befriend him, all two days before his sixteenth birthday. Now, two years later, it is time for her to come to terms with marriage, career, family, parenthood, and Kevin's horrific rampage in a series of startling correspondences with her estranged husband, Franklyn. Uneasy with the sacrifices and social demotion of motherhood from the start, Eva fears that her alarming dislike for her own son may be responsible for driving him so annilistically off the rails.

My Review:
Eva Katchadourian is a strong, plucky woman who loves her husband very much and adores her daughter beyond limits. But she just can't seem to find a way to love her son, Kevin. Or so she believes. I believe otherwise. Eva doesn't like Kevin, but I do believe she loves him despite his unlovable nature and the many ways he has found to torment her and anyone around him who has a passion in their life.

Eva narrates the story through a series of letter to her husband, Franklyn. The reader doesn't find out where Franklyn is or why he's left Eva and taken their daughter, Celia, with him until the last few pages of the novel.

In her letters to Franklyn, Eva examines their relationship before Kevin, examines her pregnancy and every aspect of Kevin's upbringing until the day he commits the mass murders. Even after the murders, Eva continues to visit Kevin in juvenile jail and try to understand him. Throughout the novel, there is an subtle argument going on as to whether behaviour is innate or nurtured. Some of the more shocking passages led to my husband and I have this discussion. He believes behaviour is nurtured, while I believe it's 80% innate and 20% nurtured. After all, Kevin does show some signs of being influenced by his mother - it's all about how those common characteristics are channeled.

I highly recommended this novel.

5/5

White Teeth

This epic novel about two families centres around two unlikely friends: Archibold Jones and Samad Miah Iqbal. The two men meet at the tail end of World War II. Archie is a laid-back English bloke who flips a coin to make most of his decisions. Samad is a intellectual, Muslim immigrant trying to establish himself and build a life for his family in the west.

The 542-page novel opens on New Year's Day 1974, Archie has just separated from his first wife and has decided to end his life by gassing himself in a parked car outside of a halal butcher shop. The butcher comes out and interrupts him stating that he does not have the necessary insurance to cover suicides on the premise. Archie takes this as a sign that he is not meant to die. And thus begins a pattern of comedic and very clever dialogue.

Later that day Archie meets Clara, a 19-year-old Jamaican immigrant desperate to escape a mother and ex-boyfriend who are both fanatic Jehovah Witnesses. A month and a half later (on Valentine's Day) the two get married and a year later, Clara gives birth to Irie. Around the same time, Samad's wife, Alsana, gives birth to identical twin boys - Magid (older by  two minutes) and Millat.

Over the next 18 years, we watch as the two families grow closer as they face minor and major crises.

The story is told via a third-person omnipresent narrative in four major blocks that are then divided into smaller chapters. Each block focuses on one or more main characters, with the other characters assuming background roles.

In the first section titled "Archie 1974, 1945", we learn about the task that Samad gave Archie at the end of the war, on which their long friendship has been built upon. We're left unsure of whether Archie has actually completed the task.

In the second section titled "Samad 1984, 1857", Samad begins an extra-marital affair with his sons' music teacher, Poppy. Repelled by his own immoral behaviour, Samad becomes concerned about his sons' morality and decides to send them back to Bengal to be raised as proper Muslims. The only problem is he can only afford to send one. We also learn about Samad great-grandfather, Mangal Pande, who Samad views as a hero for starting the process of liberating India.

The decision Samad makes about which son to send back to Bengal has repercussions for his family and the Jones, as Irie eventually falls in love with one of the twins.

Zadie Smith is a master of writing dialogue. She uses a lot of colloquial terms so the reader really gets a sense of the multiculturalism of the U.K. over the span of 20 years. Well placed and spot on vernacular adds colour and humour.

Ms. Smith must have spent a great deal of time conducting research because she handles a very diverse range of topics in order to make the various 'experts' that appear throughout the novel believable.

This is my second time reading White Teeth. I got so much from the second reading that I will no doubt read it again in the future. Jammed packed with fanatics, it doesn't just entertain - it also gives the reader a lot to think about.

I'm not sure why it's called White Teeth. Many of the chapters are named after teeth or some kind of dental procedure but they could just as easily have been named after something else.

5/5

Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood

From the book cover

When Vivi and Siddalee Walker, an unforgettable mother-daughter team, get into a savage fight over a New York Times article that refers to Vivi as a "tap-dancing child abuser," the fallout is felt from Louisiana to New York to Seattle.  Siddalee, a successful theater director with a huge hit on her hands, panics and postpones her upcoming wedding to her lover and friend, Connor McGill. Vivi's intrepid gang of lifelong girlfriends, the Ya-Yas, sashay in and conspire to bring everyone back together.

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Divine Secrets was really hard to get into. It wasn't until around page 100 of the 356-page novel that I really started to enjoy the story. I think this is because I found Sidda's story a bit too staged. It doesn't make sense that she's putting off her wedding to the man of her dreams because all of a sudden she feels like she doesn't know how to love. What does her mom's breakdown thirty years before have to do with her marrying the man of her dreams?

I would have been happy to read about all of the lives and experiences of the Ya-Yas (especially Vivi) coming of age in Louisiana in the 1930s onwards. I really enjoyed all of the flashback sections. It was interesting to see how Vivi's attitude towards the black people in her life develops, shifts and changes throughout her life. I've gained two things from this novel: a desire to visit Louisiana and a desire to read Gone with the Wind.

Rebecca Wells did a wonderful job with the character of Vivi, she really came to life. I understood her motivation and her desires and drivers. Unfortunately, I can't say the same for Sidda or the other Ya-Yas. She provided just enough tidbits about the lives of the other Ya-Yas to spark a desire in her readers to know more about these quirky ladies.

3/5

Spinsters

From the book cover

It's 1968. Frannie and Doris, sisters and spinsters, have been taking care of their father for their entire adult lives. When he dies, they hit the road in their Plymouth Valiant to take a much needed vacation. Frannie, the novel's narrator, longs to continue her reclusive life with her sister. But Doris, cut free of responsibility, wants to raise hell and get laid. Their journey through the changing landscape of America - civil rights marches, the deaths of Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King, the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago - an elegy to a lost time in the United States.
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Spinsters. It's not a word you hear very often now a days. When most people think of spinsters they think about old grey-haired cat ladies; not women in their early to mid-thirties. Dictionary.com defines a spinster as "a woman still unmarried beyond the usual age of marrying." This story is set in 1968, when the average marrying age, for women, is 20.8 years, so according to that time period, Frannie and Doris at 32 and 35 years of age, respectively, are spinsters.

I really enjoyed this novel for several reasons. Pagan Kennedy's characters go beyond the spinster stereotypes. Frannie has known since she was a young girl that she wanted to lead a spinster lifestyle after seeing her mother always frantic trying to take care of a husband and children. Doris is trapped and desperately trying to escape her spinsterhood, she's just never been able to find a man she wants to settle down with.

The character development is amazing. Frannie goes from a prudish, unforgiving and jealous woman to a more relaxed, accepting and understanding person. Doris doesn't change much but she come to appreciate her sister's practicality and even learns to rely on her strengths.

Spinsters made the 1996 Orange Prize Short List.

Spinsters is quick read. I highly recommend it.

5/5

Orange July

2012 is going by so fast! It feels like just the other day I was gushing about all the fabulous books I had on tap for Orange January. And now, here I am declaring my Orange July reading list! Unlike the books I read in January, which were all nominated 2011, the novels that made my Orange July reading list were nominated throughout the Orange Prize's almost 20-year history. I chose my Orange July books much like I choose other books - I read the synopses and pick the ones that peaked my interest.

About the Orange Prize
The Orange Prize for Fiction is a prestigious U.K. based award that celebrates full-length works of fiction written in English by female authors.

Below are the books I plan on reading this month, as always I invite you to read along and share your thoughts via the comment field.

Happy reading!

Made the shortlist in 1999

Made the shortlist in 2000

Made the shortlist in 2000

Winner of the 2005 Orange Prize

The Memory of Love

From the book cover

In contemporary Sierra Leone, a devastating civil was has left an eerie populace with terrible secrets to keep. In the capital hospital, Kai, a gifted young surgeon, is plagued by demons that are beginning to threaten his livelihood. Elsewhere in the hospital lies Elias Cole, a man who was young during the country's turbulent post-colonial years and has stories to tell that are far from heroic. As past and present intersect in the buzzing city, Kai and Elias are drawn unwittingly closer to Adrian, a British psychologist with good intentions, and into the path of one woman at the center of their stories.

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This review contains spoilers.

Aminata Forna's The Memory of Love made the 2011 Orange Prize Short List, and is an 'Essence Book Club' recommended read.

I so want to add this novel to my 5ers list - but I can't.

Don't get me wrong, it's an awesome book; the subject matter is compelling, the writing is intelligent and the main characters are dynamic, but the plot really dragged at times. It took me a good 200 pages to really get into the stories (there are 445 pages to this novel).

The first chapter opens with Elias Cole, pre-hospitalization, reminiscing about the first time he met his future wife, Saffia. Eventually, he tells the rest of his story to Adrian as the novel flashes back and forth between the present and the past.

The book gets its name from Kai's feelings for ex-girlfriend, Nenemah/Mamakey.

The hollowness in his chest, the tense yearning, the loneliness he braces against every morning until he can immerse himself in work and forget. Not love. Something else, something with a power that endures. Not love, but a memory of love. p. 185

One of the reasons I'm disappointed that I can't add this book to my 5ers list is the many strong lines and passages. Here are a few of my favourite lines/passages from the novel:

This first line is spoken by a native Sierra Leone psychiatrist (Dr. Attila) during a conversation with Adrian regarding Adrian proposed treatment plan for some of the resident of the mental hospital he manages:

'This is their reality. And who is going to come and give the people who live here therapy to cope with this?' asks Attila and waves a hand at the view. 'You call it a disorder, my friend. We call it life.' p. 319

Adrian after Mamakey dies during childbirth:

He knows what he is doing. He's already bartering with God, making offerings. It is for just such times that humankind invented gods, while hope still exists. When hope disappears, men don't call for God, they call for their mothers. p. 419

Adrian two years after Mamakey's death:

Adrian cannot believe with what intensity one can continue to love a person who is dead. Only fools, he believes, think that love is for the living. p. 439

Shortly after this last excerpt, we find out that Kai is raising Adrian and Mamakey's daughter - the one she died giving birth to! If Adrian loves her so much, wouldn't he want to raise their child? This development was unreal for three reasons:

1) Why would Kai want to raise his ex-girlfriend's child with another man. I get that she's the love of his life, but it still doesn't add up.

2) Given the great love that Adrian is suppose to feel for Mamakey why would he consent to another man raising their child?

3) Adrian expresses so much remorse at not having convinced Mamakey to leave Sierra Leone, why would he then leave their child there?

On to the characters...

I know I said earlier that the character are dynamic, let me clarify. Aminata Forna has done a fabulous job of creating characters that jump off the pages, part of what makes them so real is the fact that they are not all likable. Kai is the only main character that I can stomach. Elias Cole and Adrian appear to be the same character in different circumstances. They are both jealous, selfish and fickle.

Elias covets his friend's wife, only to embark on a long term affair once he is married to her. Worse yet, he's an opportunistic coward, who always shifts responsibility for his actions onto the establishment or someone else.

Adrian is remarkably slow for a psychologist, he fails to make a lot of obvious connections. It's hard to believe he is trained to decipher people's feelings and read between their emotional lines. Also, his selfish disregard for the wife and daughter he left in England is shameful. Adrian's sole redeeming quality is his ability to listen to victims and villains and remain non-judgemental.

This lack of judgement is one of the reason's I so yearn to put The Memory of Love on my 5ers list. Aminata Forna refrains from preaching, lecturing or judging as she shares the stories of the men who committed atrocities, and the women and men who suffered through the atrocities. She allows us see the human side of these 'villians.'

I will definitely be reading The Memory of Love again. If you have not read it, I highly suggested you read it. It's one of the most meaningful books I have read to date.

4.5/5

The Tiger's Wife

From the book cover
In a Balkan country mending from war, Natalia, a young doctor, is compelled to unravel the mysterious circumstances surrounding her beloved grandfather's recent death. Searching for clues she turns to his worn copy of The Jungle Book and the stories he told her of his encounters over the years with "the deathless man." But most extraordinary of all is the story her grandfather never told her - the legend of the tiger's wife.
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Téa Obreht's debut novel, The Tiger's Wife, won the 2011 Orange Prize for Fiction.

The Tiger's Wife is a book best savoured. Rich themes, mythical ideas and subtle yet purposeful writing make this the type of novel destined to be studied in some university English one day soon.

The Tiger's Wife is such a patient and luxurious read, it's hard to believe it's written by a 25-year-old. In the exclusive interview at the back of the book, author Jennifer Egan comments on Obreht's strength and willingness to leave things unsaid (a skill she herself was unable to master in her 20s). Obreht explains that as a reader she prefers to figure things out for herself and so she struggled to give her readers an active reading experience where everything is not explained 100 per cent.

This is my biggest issue with The Tiger's Wife.

I missed the information that was unsaid. One of the missing pieces that kept nagging at me was what happened to Natalia's father. At one point we almost find out when the guy from the draft comes to investigate their household and asks her grandfather about his son-in-law.

War is ever-present in this novel. The only war that is given a name is World War II, which takes place when the narrator's grandfather is a young man. Other wars are mentioned but not by name so it's hard to say which Baltic country this story takes place in. This doesn't bother me so much because I'm not familiar with the geography of that region or the history. But, I imagine this will bother a lot of people in the Baltics once it's translated.

Overall, The Tiger's Wife is definitely a strong novel worth reading. I don't feel like I got everything there is to the story so I'll definitely be reading it again.

The main themes are war, storytelling, myths, family and death.

4/5

Grace Williams Says It Loud

From the book cover

This isn't an ordinary love story but then Grace isn't an ordinary girl.

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Emma Henderson's Grace Williams Says it Loud made the 2011 Orange Prize short list.

Grace Williams is a 'spastic'; she was born with developmental challenges and various physical disabilities including a cleft lip, an over-sized tongue that sometimes hangs outside of her mouth causing excessive salivation, and one leg longer than the other. At the age of six, Grace contracts polio, resulting in the paralysis of her right arm.

At the age of 11, Grace is placed at the Briar Mental Institute. Grace's love story starts shortly after she arrives at the Briar and meets Daniel, a charismatic epileptic who lost his arms in a car accident.

I was disappointed by this book. It lacks a climax and Grace's narration is very detached throughout 75 per cent of the novel. There are novels where a detached narrative works, but Grace Williams isn't one of them.
Don't get me wrong, Grace is a very observant narrator. She does a great job of giving the reader a unpolished look at the routine degradation of living in a third-rate institution between the late 1950s and the mid-1980s, but something is  missing.

I think I expected more love story. It would have been nice to have more time spent exploring Grace and Daniels relationship. I was really yearning to see them away from the institution. I was hoping they'd move out on their own into some kind of independent living program or maybe Grace would get pregnant.

Either of the above scenarios would have help to move things along. As it is, this story really drags. I had to enact my 'you start it, you finish rule.'

2.5/5

Room

From the book cover

To five-year-old Jack, room is the world...

It's where he was born. It's where he and Ma eat and sleep and play and learn. There are endless wonders that let loose Jack's imagination - the snake under Bed that he constructs out of eggshells; the imaginary world projected through the TV; the coziness of Wardrobe beneath Ma's clothes, where she tucks him in safely at night, in case Old Nick comes.

Room is home to Jack, but to Ma, it's the prison where she's been held since she was nineteen - for seven long years. Through her fierce love for her son, she has created a life for him in that eleven-eleven-foot space. But Jack's curiosity is building alongside Ma's own desperation, and she knows that Room cannot contain either indefinitely...

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Emma Donoghue's Room made the 2011 Orange Prize Short List.

The Orange Prize for Fiction was set up in 1996 to celebrate and promote English works of fiction by women around the world.

It didn't take much to get me into Room. Its similarities with the high-profile Jaycee Lee Duguard case can't be ignored. When I initially read the book cover, I was a bit concerned about the story being told from the prospective of a five-year-old, but I think the technique is a stroke of genius on the part of Emma Donaghue. By using Jack to tell the story, the readers get to skip over the boring details and she's also able to inject a little bit of levity to a very sad story.

Jack, the five-year-old narrator, is no ordinary five-year-old. He's in turns extremely smart and naive about the world outside of his room and socially an infant. His intelligence is the type the comes from having a mother who's spent five years completely devoted to nurturing his body and mind as much as possible in a 11-feet square soundproof garden shed, with a sunroof being their only source of natural light.

The book is divided into five chapters, the first two document Jack and his Ma's time in their backyard dungeon, the third documents their escape and the last two their time adjusting to the outside world. I found the first two chapters really engaging, the third chapter was the typical action sequence climax and the last two chapters were a bit of a let down with the stereotypical characters one would expect in such a story.

 5

Great House

From the book cover

For twenty-five years, a reclusive American novelist has been writing at the desk she inherited from a young Chilean poet who disappeared at the hands of Pinochet's secret police; one day a girl claiming to be the poet's daughter arrives to take it away, sending the writer's life reeling. Across the ocean, in the leafy suburbs of London, a man caring for his dying wife discovers, among her papers, a lock of hair that unravels a terrible secret. In Jerusalem, an antiques dealer slowly reassembles his father's study, plundered by the Nazis in Budapest in 1944.

Connecting these stories is a desk of many drawers that exerts a power over those who possess it or have given it away.
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This novel is divided into two parts, with four very long chapters breaking up each part. Because the chapters are so long and a new narrator is introduced in each chapter, during the first part, there is a feeling of reading a series of short stories with only the desk connecting most of them. I say most of them because the desk isn't mentioned in the chapters titled "True Kindness."

In these chapters the narrator is an old man who has just buried his wife and his now dying himself. The chapters are written as a conversation between himself and his youngest son, whom he's always been somewhat estranged from. This son was at one time an aspiring writer, that seems to be the only connection with the ongoing theme of writing. I don't quite understand why these chapters are included in the novel.

All of the main characters and narrators of the chapters are very intriguing; each chapter could easily be developed into a standalone novel.

I really enjoyed the tone of this novel, but I can't help feeling that I've missed a lot of meaning behind the stories and thus will probably have to read it a second or third time in order to fully understand all of the strands. After my first read, I'd say Great House is as much about the great desk as it is about memory.

4/5

Annabel

Kathleen Winter's Annabel made the 2011 Orange Prize Short List. The Orange Prize for Fiction was set up in 1996 to celebrate and promote English works of fiction by women around the world.

In March 1968, a baby is born to Jacintha and Treadway Blake  in the small Labrador village of Croyden Harbour. To almost everyone present at the birth, the baby appears a normal, healthy boy. Thomasina Blaikie, a close friend of the family and the midwife, is the first to notice that the baby has a penis and a vagina.

Treadway decides the easiest course of action is to name the baby Wayne and take him to the Goose Bay Hospital to have the necessary surgery so that he can be raised as a boy. Thomasina and Jacintha are not sure that this is the right course of action but go along with this plan, so Thomasina secretly baptises Wayne with the name Annabel, and Jacintha nurtures his feminine side when they are alone.

Wayne does not find out about his condition until he is 12 years old.

The theme of bridges is a natural fit in this story. Wayne is a lover of bridges. To be on a bridge is to be in the middle of two places, not completely in either location. Just as Wayne is neither fully male nor female.

There are a lot of things to love about this novel - it's gentle treatment of a taboo topic, the strong characters, the fact that it's set in a small Canadian village are just a few.  But, the thing I enjoyed most, was the fact that it is about sex without being overly sexual. There are a few shocking moments that may have caused a less talented author to falter, not so with Ms. Winter.

My only complaints surrounds Wayne's reaction to his situation. It seemed unreal,  he doesn't display any shock or anger on several occasion when it's seemed only natural that he would. Even after he's viciously assaulted he doesn't seem to feel the humiliation his father imagines him as having suffered. Perhaps, all of this is just part of him being naive.

4/5

On Beauty

From the book cover
WHAT ARE THE TRULY BEAUTIFUL THINGS IN LIFE - AND HOW FAR WILL YOU GO TO GET THEM?
Howard Belsey is an Englishman abroad, an academic teaching in Wellington, a college town in New England. Married young, thirty years later he is struggling to revive his love for his African American wife, Kiki. Meanwhile, his three teenage children - Jerome, Zora and Levi - are each seeking the passions, ideals and commitments that will guide them through their own lives.
Set on both sides of the Atlantic, Zadie Smith's third novel is a brilliant look at family life, marriage, the collision of the personal and political, and an honest look at people's self-deceptions.
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Zadie Smith won the 2006 Orange Prize for Fiction for On Beauty.

I want to love On Beauty, but all I can muster is a strong liking. I really enjoy Zadie Smith's writing style; it's casual, smart, witty and unpretentious. I think the problem for me is there is just too much going on, even for 443 pages. Among the themes crowding On Beauty are race, politics, and social and economic class differences.

How much do colour (specifically blackness) and social and economic factors determine one's personality? Many of the character ask themselves similar questions privately. Kiki finds herself often putting on an 'Aunt Jemima' act to humour her white friends. Levi is desperate to get away from his upscale Wellington upbringing and make a life for himself hustling in the 'hood, cause to him that's what it means to be black. Howard is busy fighting to ensure that being black doesn't affect the opportunities available to his children. Monty Kipps is trying to prove that blacks are better off without affirmative action. These characters are among the 'loudest' voices in the race discussion in On Beauty.

Despite the seriousness of the main themes, much of On Beauty reads like a comedy of fools. There are comedic undertones in even the most serious scenes. Some of the funniest scenes are the ones in which characters are engaged in sexual intercourse. It was one such scene between Howard and Kiki that put my finger on one of the biggest issues I have with this novel. It's hypocritical. We're suppose to think that Howard is in love with Kiki despite her size and truly desires her, yet every time he expresses a physical desire for her, he comes off as acting cartoonish and clowny. I get the feeling Smith was trying to write Kiki as a big, beautiful black woman not embarrassed by her size but instead she's created a racial caricature.

I'm not sure that the title On Beauty fits this novel. I presume it is taken from a poem one of the character's published in a poetry book. The actual poem was written by Nick Laird.

On Beauty
No, we could not itemize the list
of sins they can't forgive us.
The beautiful don't lack the wound.
It is always beginning to snow.

Of sins they can't forgive us
speech is beautiful useless.
It is always beginning to snow.
The beautiful know this.

Speech is beautiful useless.
They are the damned.
The beautiful know this.
They stand around unnatural as statuary.

They are the damned
and so their sadness is perfect,
delicate as an egg placed in your palm.
Hard, it is decorated with their face

and so their sadness is perfect.
The beautiful don't lack the wound.
Hard, it is decorated with their face.
No, we could not itemize the list.

What this poem has to do with the many crisis in the story, I do not know. Sure there are a few characters in the story who are described as exceptionally *eye roll* beautiful but there are beautiful characters in every story, why the title?

I really enjoyed this book but it was tiring. There is so much going on and much of it proves irrelevant to the plot.

4/5

Home

From the book cover

Glory Boughton, age thirty-eight, has returned to Gilead to care for her dying father. Soon her brother Jack - the prodigal son of the family, gone twenty years - comes home, too, looking for refuge and trying to make peace with a past littered with difficulty and pain. A troubled boy from childhood, an alcoholic who cannot hold a job, he is perpetually at odds with his surroundings and with his traditionalist father, though he remains Robert Boughton's most beloved child. Brilliant, lovable, and wayward, Jack forges an intense bond with Glory and engages painfully and profoundly with John Ames, his godfather and namesake.

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Marilynne Robinson won the 2009 Orange Prize for Fiction and a Pulitzer Prize for Home.

I don't get it. The first 200 pages are dull and boring. There are no chapters so it's a bitch for those of us who commute or simply have busy lives that don't allow us to sit down and read an entire 325-page novel in one go. Yeah, it does have some page breaks, but that's not the same as chapters. Until reading this novel, I never realized how important chapters are to the reading experience.

The main themes in this novel are redemption, grace and destiny. Jack and Glory's father, Reverend Boughton, is dying but can not do so in peace because he is worried about Jack's soul. Due to the main conflict, Robinson explores a lot of theological ideals as the Boughtons try to come to some sort of acceptance that will allow the Reverend Boughton to die in peace. Set in the 1950s, around the time of the Montgomery riots, racial injustice is subtly intertwined in the dialogue and plot.

Home is a companion to Robinson's second novel, Gilead.  Apparently Home and Gilead are set at the same time and tell the same stories from different perspectives. I'm putting Gilead on my reading list to see if it changes my impression of Home.

Recommendation? If you like dull and boring, give Home a shot!

2.5/5

Half of a Yellow Sun

From the book cover

With astonishing empathy and the effortless grace of a natural storyteller, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie weaves together the lives of three characters swept up in the turbulence of Nigeria in the 1960s. Thirteen-year-old Ugwu is employed as a houseboy for a university professor full of revolutionary zeal. Olanna is the professor's beautiful mistress, who has abandoned her life of privilege in Lagos for a dusty university town and the charisma of her new lover. And Richard is a shy young Englishman in thrall to Olanna's twin sister, an enigmatic figure who refuses to belong to anyone. As Nigerian troops advance and the three must run for their lives, their ideals are severely tested, as are their loyalties to one another.

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Half of a Yellow Sun won Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie the Orange Prize for Fiction in 2007. She made the shortlist in 2004 for her first novel The Purple Hibiscus.

Half of a Yellow Sun centers around Biafra's fight for independence during the Nigeria-Biafra War of 1967-1970. The title comes from the emblem on the Biafra flag - half of a yellow sun. On the Biafra flag it represents the glorious future. The story shifts back and forth between the early 1960s pre-war period and the late 1960s war period.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's decision to structure the novel in four parts (two parts in the early 60s and two parts during the war) and to employ three narrators from varying socio-economics classes ensures the reader gets a complete picture of this tumultuous decade in Nigerian history.

Ugwu is a village boy who left primary school early to help care for his family. When his aunt gets him a job with the professor an entire world of limitless learning opens up to him. He is able to continue his education and eventually develop a genuine desire for knowledge. Olanna, the professor's mistress, is the daughter of a 'big man.' She and her twin sister, Kainene, have had all of the benefits of money and power. They were raised in an opulent mansion with lots of servants, attended the best schools in Africa and abroad and have been set up for a life of ease, if they choose to take the paths offered by their parents. Richard is an English writer in Africa to conduct research for a book he hopes to write about Igbo art. When Richard meets Kainene he becomes enthralled with her and everything else becomes secondary, including his writing.

Adichie does a wonderful job with character development. Her characters are multi-dimensional. Almost all of the primary characters grow and evolve as they struggle to survive the war. Some of the characters discover hidden strengths, others are shown to be weak, and others prove capable of extreme cruelty. This is a truth of war. People who live through war are seldom the same people they were going into said war.

One of the most shocking plot developments belong to Ugwu, who is conscripted in the Biafra army and willingly takes part in the gang rape of a young woman. One doesn't expect the main character to be involved in a crime so detestable. Despite his crime, Ugwu remains a somewhat sympathetic character. It's clear that he would not have committed the act on his own but simply acquiesced to peer pressure. Ironically, at the end of the war, Ugwu returns to his village to find that his favourite sister, the one he was closest to, was gang raped by five Nigerian soldiers during the war.

My only squabble is the lack of a happy ending. But, I guess that too is a reality of war. At the end of the day, Half of a Yellow Sun taught me about a former country (Biafra), an ethic group (Igbo) and a war I had never heard of , and that's what a good historical fiction should do - teach and entertain.

5

Flag of the Republic of Biafra (1967-1970)

Larry's Party

From the book cover
Larry Weller, born in Winnipeg in 1950, is like a lot of people. He's never really liked his first name; "its Larryness has always seemed an imprisonment and a sly wink toward its most conspicuous rhyme: ordinary... He was just one more citizen of the Larry nation, those barbecuers, those volunteer firemen, those wearers of muscle shirts" But Larry Weller is an ordinary guy made extraordinary by his creator's perception, irony and tenderness. Carol Shields gives us a resonant and unforgettable portrait of a man - a sensuously detailed CAT scan of his life.
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Larry's Party won Carol Shields the Orange Prize for Fiction in 1998. Shields is the second Canadian to win this prestigious award since its inception in 1996.

I've always kinda-sorta wondered what it's like to be a white male. Now, thanks to Larry's Party, I have a pretty good idea.

Larry's Party puts me in mind of movies like Forrest Gump and Fargo. The Fargo thing might be because we meet the main character (who, I imagine, looks like William H.Macy) in an icebox of a city. The Forrest Gump feel because Larry seems to be drifting through life and finding success despite not really searching for it. Each chapter reads like a short story or fictional essay about a specific area of Larry's life.

The story opens with a 26-year-old Larry walking down a street in Winnipeg, on his way to meet his girlfriend, Dorrie. This is the moment Larry identifies as the start of his adult life. It's also the moment that he realizes he is in love with Dorrie. Women play a huge role in Larry's life. In his early thirties, Larry comes to the realization that all of the important conversations in his life have been with women.

The last chapter of the book, "Larry's Party", serves up a great "ah ha" moment. Larry's feelings become shockingly clear. Despite the romantic ending, there were stretches of the last chapter that I did not enjoy. The dinner party conversation was dizzying. It was a relief to return to the first-person narration, and the letters and emails.

Despite some disappointing dinner party conversation, Larry's Party goes in my five pile. I thoroughly enjoyed reading about Larry Weller's life and would have enjoyed another 100 pages. I highly recommend Larry's Party. The recap of pertinent information in each chapter make it a great book for commuters.

5