Monday, June 23, 2008

What is the What by Dave Eggers

Sometimes I read a book where from the very first page I feel lucky. What is the What is that book to an extreme. Reading this story of one of the Lost Boys from Sudan makes me realize that any concerns or problems I might have are pretty trivial in the grand scheme of things.

This is the story of Valentino Achak Deng as told to Dave Eggers. It is a book of fiction as opposed to a memoir since Achak was only around 6 when he began his march from Sudan to Ethiopia. Eggers used the first person narrative to relay Achak’s voice, but obviously had to make up some dialogue from that time. However, as they make clear on material available at http://www.valentinoachakdeng.org/, all the really bad, incredulous seeming stuff did actually happen to Achak.

This book is an epic. It is the story of a boy trying to survive. Soldiers, wild animals, disease, starvation, and exhaustion are all threats to Achak. And, it doesn’t end with him arriving in the United States. The book begins in flashbacks as Achak is robbed, tied up, and gagged in his apartment in Atlanta. After this experience he calls a friend who says to him, “I am, she says, like the boy who cries wolf, except that each time I cry wolf there is actually a wolf.” (pg 231)

It is an amazing and powerful story and gives much insight into living in a refugee camp; Achak lived in camps for eleven years. In the first camp in Ethiopia Achak describes new arrivals, “The people came without end, and each time they crossed the river, we knew it meant that the food we had would need to be further divided. I came to resent the sight of my own people, to loathe how many of them there were, how needful, gangrenous, bug-eye, and wailing.” (pg 235) He talks about how people think of refugee camps as temporary last ditch measures for desperate people, which they are, and he lived in them for more than a decade.

What is the What is truly a remarkable story. It bothers me that the United States or some organization did not better equip these Lost Boys once they were resettled in the United States. If they were over the age of 18, they were on their own working low-wage jobs and trying to go to school at night. The really lucky ones were younger and able to attend high school first. More information on the main character and on Sudan and the current conflict in Darfur can be found at http://www.valentinoachakdeng.org/.

Monday, June 16, 2008

Springtime on Mars by Susan Woodring

Springtime on Mars is a collection of stories that has nothing to do with science fiction, despite the title. The stories are grounded in the reality of the minute details of everyday life. It almost seems like the most intriguing stories in this collection are toward the end of the book. I am not sure if that is true or if it is just that Woodring’s writing began to resonate more with me at that point.

The stories that really struck me were the ones where a life changing event occurred. In “The Neighbors” two couples experience significant events on the same day. One husband is hit by lightning. Woodring deftly describes how he can’t recognize his wife. “Mainly, he wondered who was this woman who leaned over him holding a plastic cup of water to his lips. She smelled like a coin, warm and moist in the palm of his hand, but he couldn’t trust his senses since the water tasted like copper.” (pg 158) I could almost taste that coppery tang while reading those lines.

Woodring also places the stories in context around historical happenings. In the story entitled “Radio Vision” JFK has been shot. A few days later a woman is electrocuted in her basement. It is interesting to think that even while our nation was in mourning for the president, accidents and tragedies that did not make the headlines must have had huge impacts on individual families or communities and were sort of under the shadow of the larger national event. I did wish that this story continued and dealt more with the aftermath of this woman’s death on her nine-year-old twins.

The title story in this collection is definitely worth reading. It is available on the author’s website. Woodring’s strengths include that she can write from the point-of-view of an elderly man or a young girl and make you believe it, and I think she has a very subtle yet illuminating way of capturing a tragedy on paper.

For more information on the author and to see what other reviewers had to say check out Blog Stop Book Tours.

Friday, June 13, 2008

Apologies Forthcoming by Xujun Eberlein

I was in a lab in graduate school that had graduate students and post-docs from all over the world. While I was there we had people from China, Germany, Canada, Japan, Holland, Taiwan, Italy, Korea, and the US, and possibly a few other places. After reading Apologies Forthcoming by Xujun Eberlein, I wish I had taken the time to find out more of their background stories and how each person ended up there in that particular lab.

This collection of short stories by Eberlein focuses on China during and after the Cultural Revolution. They are powerful stories. Stories that leave you wondering how a country could put itself back together. It is a very timely release right before the Beijing Olympics when the attention on China is going to be intense. Can you imagine a ten-year period where all the colleges and most high schools in a country were shut down? Educated people were sent to the countryside to be re-educated. Teenagers were separated from their families and sent into the Red Guard or off to the countryside as well.

In a story entitled, “The Randomness of Love”, a seventeen-year-old girl explains why she is in the countryside. “ 'All other countries in the world have population flowing from the countryside to the cities: only China is practicing the opposite. Our population flows from the cities to the countryside. This is a creative revolutionary movement, and its historical significance can never be overestimated.' ” Fast-forward ten years later and this disillusioned woman is having trouble adjusting to her boring job and begins an affair with a married man. And, it seems to me that she is one of the lucky ones, surviving her insertion into the countryside near the end of the Cultural Revolution and making it to college.

Other stories are full of despair. The author draws on some of her own experiences during the Cultural Revolution, including the death of her older sister as a Red Guard. In “Feathers” a ten-year-old girl must pretend that her sister is still alive. She enlists the help of those who live around her so that her grandmother will not know. It seems a horrendous burden on a ten-year-old, yet amongst everything else that is happening you can almost see how a mother would allow it. Almost. The stories are dark, yet they are not without hope and they are definitely worth reading. Eberlein portrays not only the victims, but also those who served in the Red Guard or told on their neighbors. No one can escape being one or the other, or oftentimes both in these kinds of circumstances.

The Cultural Revolution, or rather, what is now known as Ten Disastrous Years, ended in 1976. That means the post-doc and graduate students from China in my lab must have lived through a portion of it. Maybe they lucked out and caught the tail end where they still managed to get a high school education and the tests to get into college were being restarted. Definitely their parents lived through this time. It is interesting to me now that we never discussed this and that to all intents and purposes we adapted to working in the same lab in the US despite our vastly different experiences. Is that the true power of education?

Check out Blog Stop Book Tours for more information on the author and to see what other reviewers have to say about Apologies Forthcoming.

Tuesday, June 3, 2008

Brodie Farrell Mysteries by Jo Bannister

I love finding a new, new to me that is, mystery series. Especially one that has a number of books in the series already published. It means you don't have to wait a year or two for the author to write the next one.

I have recently been reading Jo Bannister's mysteries featuring Brodie Farrell. I started with the most recent one, Flawed, and then went back and started at the beginning with Echoes of Lies. There are seven mysteries in all so far.

Brodie Farrell is a divorced, single mother living in England. To support herself and her daughter she starts up a business called Looking for Something? So, that is what she does. Some days she may be searching antique shops for a particular vase to match one a client has at home or she may be looking for a person. It is through this business that she meets Daniel Hood, a mathematics teacher. Daniel is stubborn and always insists on telling the truth; this may seem like a plus, but it tends to get him into difficult situations. Brodie also meets and develops a relationship with Detective Superintendent Jack Deacon, who seems physically and emotionally to be the opposite of Hood.

The interactions between these three people are well-developed, realistic, and intriguing. Other characters that enter the different books are also interesting, including Deacon's assistant and the various villians that come and go. Now I'm waiting for book #8 to come out.