Interpreter of Maladies

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Title: Interpreter of Maladies
Author: Jhumpa Lahiri
Pages: 198
Rating: 3 stars

I feel truly ashamed to give a book that won the Pulitzer three stars, but while I recognize that the writing was excellent, the subject matter good, the stories , the balance well kept between the short stories....I didn't really enjoy it. I liked a couple of the short stories, but most of the others I read left me a little cold. Nor did I actively dislike it. I was simply not moved.

The book, I can objectively say, is good. It's a series of short stories about people whose ancestors were from India, living their lives, trying to find satisfaction with whatever they have. Each story is unique, and I daresay interesting. If you were interested in this book, I would tell you to read it. It just wasn't quite for me.

#21: "The Garden of Empress Cassia" by Gabrielle Wang

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The Garden of Empress Cassia by Gabrielle Wang (Penguin, 2002)



Mimi Lu doesn't like being Chinese in Australia. She doesn't like being different from the kids at school, and doesn't like being called "Smelly-Lou" (who would?). She's teased and bullied for her difference, and on top of that, her parents want her to focus on getting good grades when what she wants to do is draw pictures. Her art teacher at school is sympathetic and lets Mimi have extra classes at lunchtime. And then she gives Mimi a set of "Empress Cassia pastels". Mimi's draws the Garden of Empress Cassia outside her parent's Herbal Medicine shop, and all sorts of things begin to change.

Mimi is a *wonderful* character, a totally believable eleven-or-so year old girl; her friend Josh is also marvelous. I was a little uncomfortable with Old Ma and his "very wise very old Chinese man" sort of role. But I did love the book overall, and the ending is terribly, wonderfully gripping.

Wang is third generation Chinese Australian. The Garden of Empress Cassia was her first novel, and Mimi is very much based on Wang herself as a child. I was also interested by the ways in which this book can be read as a meditation on cultural appropriation. Which is perhaps better left for a discussion with others who have also read the book.

Wang has a new book coming out in the next month or so: "The Ghost in the Suitcase". This new book has been highly recommended and I'm looking forward to reading it.

#1: The Legends of Khasak, by OV Vijayan

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The Legends of Khasak by O V Vijayan (trans. English by the author)

( Read more... )

#21: Fearless Jones by Walter Mosley

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Like Mosley’s better known Easy Rawlins series, this is a noir story focusing on a black man and his best friend who get caught up in a series of escalating events.

Set in 1950’s L.A., Paris Minton has only recently opened a used bookshop when a woman named Love comes in, looking for help and pursued, of course, by mysterious men. Soon, he’s been beaten, shot at and robbed. And then he went home and found his store-and home-burned to the ground. He knows he needs help but his secret weapon is his brave, charming friend, Fearless Jones, a WWII veteran, who’s in jail. And so, naturally, he has to get him out.

The friendship between Paris and Fearless and overall plot play out fairly similarly to the friendship between Easy and Mouse in Devil in A Blue Dress, though some themes are different, such as the inclusion of Jews and their treatment at the time, and Mosley has come a ways as an author in between the two books. Paris and Fearless are easy to like (and I’m especially fond of Paris’s love of books) as are their supporting cast. Devil in A Blue Dress is less misogynistic than most noir, and Fearless Jones is even less so. Multiple women get to have sex without dying. Actually, I think only one woman dies, and for important plot reasons. Women also get to have sex without being temptresses out to lead our hero astray.

I was also better able to follow who killed and attacked who and why, though that did still get a little confusing.

7, 8, 9: Indian Summer, Ten Things..., Skim

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7: Indian Summer by Pratima Mitchell

YA fiction. Sarla is the London-born-and-raised daughter of a career-oriented TV reporter; when her mother is assigned to a warzone during her school holidays, she's furious at first because their plans to travel together have been destroyed, but soon comes up with an alternative: she can spend the summer with her grandparents in northern India. Her mother's not super enthusiastic about this, and Sarla can tell that there's something going on between her mother and her grandparents, but she goes anyway, and meets Bina, the granddaughter of her grandparents' chief servants. Bina's mother is nowhere to be seen, and the area is troubled by rumours of guerillas, and of Shobharani Devi, the deified bandit queen of the hills...

I loved this book. It's got its moments of humour, but for the most part it's a serious exploration of poverty, corruption, class division, family secrets, friendship, and the cultural gap between British-born Indians and those who actually live in India. Sarla is slightly spoiled, as the contrast between her situation and Bina's makes clear; she suffers a few uncomfortable moments when she's made aware of her privilege as a well-off Western-born girl, and of the limits of her perspective. Bina can be quite harsh with her and there are times when Sarla almost bullies Bina -- without really meaning to, just by the sheer force of her personality. Sarla takes her own assertiveness for granted, which Bina envies; as a servant-class girl with a shameful secret, she's been taught to hold back all her life. Yet despite the contrasts and conflicts between them, they develop a very warm and touching friendship and learn a lot from each other. Highly recommended.

8: Ten Things I Hate About Me by Randa Abdel-Fatteh

This has been reviewed a lot on this comm, and I don't have much to add to other people's comments. It was funny; it was touching; the plot was a bit overly predictable and the resolution a bit pat; overall, I enjoyed it, but not as much as Indian Summer.

9: Skim by Mariko Tamaki and Jillian Tamaki

Oh. Ohhhh. Oh, how I wish I could have read this when I was 14.

I've been hearing Jillian Tamaki's name cited positively in connection with comics for ages, but this is the first time I've ever actually read anything of hers; she drew this graphic novel from her cousin Mariko's script. (Mariko also wrote Emiko Superstar, a GN from the late lamented Minx line.) And it is wonderful. I am slightly biased because, race and geography aside, this could have been about me in a lot of ways. But it's not just empathy that drives my love of this graphic novel: it is just so damned good.

"Skim" is the nickname of Kimberly Keiko Cameron, a quiet, overweight, not-terribly-confident Japanese-Canadian 16-year-old who goes to a Catholic girls' school, wants to be a Wiccan witch, and is painfully in love with Ms Archer, her English teacher. Skim is narrated by her diary entries, complete with stricken-out false starts; there's a gap between what happens and what Kim thinks about what happens, and what she wants to think about what happens, that is handled so deftly you won't even notice the Tamakis are doing anything unusual. But they are; narration in comics is usually just another way of moving the story on, not the careful layering of perception, desire and reality that's going on here. Allied to that is the careful placing of the art: Kim is an astute observer of others, but doesn't push herself forward, and the way the panels move from one slightly off-centre image to another embodies perfectly that way of hanging back and looking at everything, but never too directly in case you get caught staring.

And I'm being all coherent here when what I really want to do is draw hearts around the Tamakis' names and send them embarrassingly gushy emails about how awesome Skim is. It's so honest and so real and so compassionate and so wise and so beautifully drawn and so amazingly written and I was Kim (...not in every way, obviously, but in several very important ways), and I love it to bits and pieces. I want every library in the world to have a copy of this book. I want every queer teenager in the world to have a copy of this book. It's just that good.

#22: Beyond Heaving Bosoms: The Smart Bitches' Guide to Romance Novels by Sarah Wendell & Cindy Tan

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

We do it in the dark. Under the sheets. With a penlight. We wear sunglasses and a baseball hat at the bookstore. We have a "special place" where we store them. Let's face it: Not many folks are willing to publicly admit they love romance novels. Meanwhile, romance continues to be the bestselling fiction genre. Ever. So what's with all the shame?

A while back, Tan and Wendell’s website Smart Bitches, Trashy Books got a lot of attention when they discovered that prolific romance novelist Cassie Edwards had plagiarized various texts in order to add “historical flavor” to her books. Such as a post-coital discussion about black-footed ferrets ripped from an academic article. Now they’ve published a 300 (or so) page meta about romance novels.

The book is brilliantly funny and sometimes so spot on that it’s painful to read. Such as the 49 page “choose your own romance novel” section, which allows you to explore the most stereotyped archetypes of the romance novel in its various manifestations. This is followed by a romance novel coloring page and romance novel mad libs. Never let it be said that art projects and games have no place in semi-serious discussion?

Tan and Wendell deconstruct and examine the genre and its characters and manifestations on all levels, including its strengths and weaknesses, as well as the genre’s politicas and representations of society, race, gender and sexuality. And do it all in a typically brilliantly and bitingly funny way. A few quotes:

( cut for length )

It’s not perfect-for example, the writers are clearly used to a format where they can later return and expand on their thoughts after receiving feedback, something they address themselves at the end, and I’m not sure I agree with some of their assertions, such as that it’s the hero’s job, not the heroine’s, to hold the reader’s interest-but it’s a good read for people who like the genre, either unabashedly or shamefully, and for people who wonder why it’s so popular, or why people they think of as smart read the things.

#15 - The Coldest Winter Ever by Sister Souljah

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I'm still not completely sure who Sister Souljah is, but I was in Barnes and Noble with my boys yesterday and saw the cover to this, and recognized the name from somewhere. I picked the book up, started reading, and fifteen pages later was still standing there reading.

And yes, I'm done, 28 hours later. It's that good.

Winter Santiaga is a rich, spoiled, beautiful brilliant teenager whose father is a drug dealer. They live in Brooklyn and have everything anyone could wish for: the best clothes, jewels, cars, the works. She's overprotected by her doting father, but like all teenagers, she manages to circumvent the rules and have fun anyway.

Winter, for all her faults, is such a teenager that I couldn't help but love her.

( But then it all starts to fall apart. (cut for spoilers) )

One thing I liked about this book was how real it felt, what a variety of people were in it, how the characters were portrayed. It drew me in like few books have.

This is an excellent read; highly recommended.

Once Upon a Quinceanera: Coming of Age in the USA by Julia Alvarez

[afterannabel.livejournal.com]

3) Once Upon a Quinceanera: Coming of Age in the USA by Julia Alvarez

I have mixed feelings about this book. My biggest complaint was that I was often frustrated by Alvarez's use of Spanish words and idioms, of which she rarely provided translation. I took Spanish on and off in high school and college, and some words' meanings are intuitive (familia) or obvious from the context, so that was helpful. But it made me stumble many times throughout the book. I really liked the fact that Alvarez dug deeper and explored how young Latina women in America struggle with incorporating both cultures into their lives in meaningful ways, without compromising themselves.