Novel – Page 6 – …on the B.L.

Forgotten Country

June 26, 2017 RaeAnna

Read Yes
Length 296
Quick Review The story of a Korean family who emigrated to the US. Following the oldest daughter as she looks to the past while coping with her father’s illness in the present. Delving into issues of identity, immigration, education, family, sisterhood, cancer, and more.

Catherine Chung is able to capture the complexities of familial relationships with grace tackling difficult subjects.

The protagonist, Janie, is in her mid twenties and a PhD student when her sister disappears and her father is diagnosed with cancer soon after. While trying to put her family back together she looks toward her version of the past for answers. As the story unravels more versions emerge giving a larger picture to the intricacies of what it means to be family and siblings.

Chung takes on issues of immigration and the difficulty of identity as a child growing up in a new culture. She explores the problems of being the peacemaker in a family. The issue of being born a girl within a family desperately wanting a boy. Having to face the reality of a past after having lived never suspecting the truth.

For me, the most interesting aspect of Forgotten Country is a truth I have been toying with for awhile. Though siblings are raised under similar conditions with the same parents, advantages, genes, and everything else, they have completely different experiences within those conditions. It is a difficult reality coming to this conclusion that siblings have vastly different experiences of the same instance or that a moment away can make all the difference to another.

I really loved this novel. I believe it has more depth than it seems at first glance. I look forward to reading her future work. She has a bright future ahead of her.

Memorable Quotes
“And it seemed that if this impossible thing was true, the opposite could also happen.”
“In the end, we left our house bravely: we did not go from room to room talking about old memories. We did not stand and state, or turn back for one last glance.”
““Your girls need names.” “They already have names,” my mother said. “Proper names,” Mr. B. clarified. “American names.””
“I think joy can stop time.”

Title: Forgotten Country
Author: Catherine Chung
Publisher: Riverhead Books
Copyright: 2012
ISBN: 9781594486524

Books

White Teeth

June 13, 2017 RaeAnna

Read Read
Length 448
Quick Review A funny, smart glimpse into the melange of cultures residing within London and the young people growing up among them.

I am ashamed to say, this is my first Zadie Smith novel. I’ve been hearing fabulous things about her for years, and yet I never got around to reading anything by her. I bought this book a few months back, and it had sat on my shelves untouched. I read her short story in The New Yorker and knew I had to read her book immediately. If you can’t tell by the Memorable Quotes section, I loved this book.

White Teeth follows the lives of two men Archie Jones and Samad Iqbal in suburban England, and their children as they struggle to find their place. Archie Jones is a white man who marries a young black Jamaican women; together they have a biracial daughter. Samad Iqbal is a Bangladeshi married to a woman from also from Bangladesh; they have twin boys. Archie and Samad served in the war together, and reconnect when Samad emigrates to the UK from Bangladesh. Their children deal with the difficulties of being mixed and Bangladeshi in a society predominately white.

Smith dives into issues of race, religion, assimilation, and even hair products with depth, insight, and a sense of humor. She writes each character with so much profundity and sincerity it is easy to sympathize with even the least likable people.

I can’t wait to read more of her works.

Memorable Quotes
“This was a decided-upon suicide. In fact, it was a New Year’s resolution.”
“No matter what anyone says, suicide takes guts.”
“…making sure they didn’t get too close, scared they might catch religion like an infection.”
“Samad, when the male organ of a man stands erect, two third of his intellect go away.”
“If religion is the opiate of the people, tradition is an even more sinister analgesic, simply because it rarely appears sinister.”
“I think I have been cursed with two sons more dysfunctional than Mr. Cain and Mr. Abel.”
“Greeting cards routinely tell us even-handed deserves love. No. Everybody deserves clean water. Not everybody deserves love all the time.”
“Every moment happens twice: inside and outside, and they are two different histories.”

Title: White Teeth
Author: Zadie Smith
Publisher: Vintage Books
Copyright: 2000
ISBN: 9780375703867

Books

The Thing Around Your Neck

February 24, 2017 RaeAnna

Read Yes
Length 218
Quick Review Twelve short stories in one book exploring women’s lives in Nigeria and America. As always, I highly recommend it because Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is amazing.

Up until now, I have only read Adichie’s novels, so I was excited to read her short stories. She is renowned for her story teller’s expertise, and has been published in some of the best journals including The Iowa Review – a little home-state pride!

Her style, as always, is incredibly straightforward but incredibly nuanced. Her imagery paints a clear picture of the world her characters live in. Her endings are abrupt leaving the reader craving for more yet allowing each person to take away something different. Though the endings are always frustrating, I keep coming back to them wondering what happened.

Adichie explores the realities of womanhood. The meaning of being a black woman in Nigeria and the U.S., and how those meanings and realities differ. The trials and tribulations of being a woman, a black woman, and an immigrant are shown instead of explained. It’s a resonating exploration of how outsiders men, white women, non-immigrants/outsiders of a culture fail to understand the essence of what a black woman’s experience is. Though I share the identity of woman and can identify and understand those trials, I can only read, ask questions, research, but mostly listen to black women (really any woman of color) to understand the obstacles they must overcome, which I do not have to.

I recommend anything Adichie writes. Especially if you want to begin learning, empathizing, and hopefully empowering those different from yourself.

Memorable Quotes
“Then Chika feels a prick of guilt for wondering if this woman’s mind is large enough to grasp any of that.”
“But why do we say nothing?”
“It’s never quite like that in real life, is it? Women are never victims in that sort of crude way.”

Title : The Thing Around Your Neck
Author: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichi
Publisher: Anchor Books
Copyright: 2009
ISBN: 9780307455918

Books

1Q84

February 14, 2017 RaeAnna

Read Yes
Length 925
Quick Review Long but worth it. It’s a surreal, mystery, dystopian, fantastical love story. Technically it’s three books, but I read it in a volume of one.

Haruki Murakami wrote 1Q84 in three separately published books; however, the translated version appeared as a single volume with subsequent publications separating them again. I read it as one, and my only complaint is it’s awkward to finagle that large of a paperback.

1Q84 is a woven narrative of two characters finding their way through a world they happen into towards one another. The characters are rounded, real, and tangible to anyone who has feelings. Though the storyline is dystopian and the plot full of things no one on earth will ever experience, the characters are reachable. Their overwhelming sense of loneliness uniquely captures an aspect of humanity everyone feels in varying degrees of severity.

Murakami explores themes like religion, cult, politics, love, fate, and ultimately humanity by stepping away from the world we live in into a dystopian universe with two moons.

I’ll be honest, I haven’t read any of Murakami’s other works. If this is the standard, I need to read more. Though, I’m sad it’s only available to me in translation. Books always lose things in translation. Since I have experience in the field, I always read translations wondering what was changed, what was lost, are their cultural things I’m not getting, etc., and I am left to wonder how fabulous the original happens to be.

It’s odd. Less than 200 pages from the end of the third book, the narration style changes briefly. Throughout the book, up until this point, the narrative focuses on the perspective of one character per chapter. Here, the narration includes the happenings of the other significant characters implying the convergence of the storylines. Normally, the narrator is third person from whatever character is the action of the chapter. In this minor section, the narrator is different. The narrator becomes omniscient for the blippest of a moment. Though subtle, it stands out because it veers so drastically from the 976 pages of previously dominating narrative. Just as quickly, the new style evaporates into the original. As far as the last 50 pages, the narration style is thrown into the air as everything comes together.

Memorable Quotes
“If you belong to the majority, you can avoid thinking about lots of troubling things.”
“Feelings like that don’t give you any choice, do they?” Aomame said. “They come at you whenever they want to.”
“‘Massacre?’ ‘The ones who did it can always rationalize their action and even forget what they did. They can turn away from things they don’t want to see. But the surviving victims can never forget. They can’t turn away.’”
“But people can never fully divorce themselves from the images implanted during early childhood”
“There is always just a thin line separating deep faith from intolerance.”
“Somehow the world survived the Nazis, the atomic bomb, and modern music.”

Title: 1Q84

Author: Haruki Murakami
Translated By: Jay Rubin (Book 1 & 2) and Philip Gabriel (Book 3)
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Copyright: 2011