reading notes: the sister and chains

So I’ve finished two books since I last blogged: The Sister by Poppy Adams and Chains by Laura Halse Anderson.

The Sister I won in a draw from Melanie at The Indextrious Reader.  I’ve been wanting to read it for sometime so I was really excited when I won a copy of it and some other books and I decided it would be the first of the lot I read.  I did enjoy it, and I kept reading, eager to find out what happened, though something seemed to be lacking for me.  I complained before about the end of chapters in The Crimson Portrait, how there was too much made at the end of each chapter, but here I found I had the opposite problem.  Many chapters seemed to leave me too abruptly, still waiting more of the scene.  I’ve always been fascinated with the unreliable narrator though and I think that is what really intrigued me most about the novel.  There was a whole other story here, and I loved trying to figure that out my reading through the lines and gathering the hints and suggestions Adams wove into the narrative.

Though I enjoyed The Sister on that level, I felt a bit disappointed in my reading of it.  Chains, on the other hand, was a really engaging read.  Anderson’s novel takes place during the American Revolution.  It focuses on Isabel, a young slave girl who is supposed to be freed (with her baby sister) after her owner dies, but the inheriting nephew sells her to the Locktons, a couple who support the Loyalists.  The action takes place in New York and it is interesting seeing the Revolution through this perspective.  Isabel’s struggle to free herself and her sister kept my attention right from the start, and the persecution she experiences is absolutely heart-breaking.  Anderson does a good job of stressing the irony of slavery in a country that is fighting for independence without that message ever becoming preachy.  I found the characters well-developed and complex, with even Mrs. Lockton – Isabel’s chief persecutor – was more complicated and her actions more horrific because she is herself is a victim of abuse.  I have to say that my only problem with the book is that Isabel’s story will continue in another volume and according to Anderson’s website that won’t be till the fall of 2010.  It seems such a long wait when I’m so anxious to continue with Isabel’s journey.

photo of the day: berry out of focus

I’ve been seeing things a bit out of focus recently, thanks to all the photos I’ve been taking with my lensbaby.  This is one of my favourite shots using the macro attachment.

photo of the day: tart lemon

I’ve just purchased a Lensbaby muse so today involved a lot of experimentation with different objects around the house, including marbles.  The colour of this one reminded me of a tart lemon pie.

reading notes: Little Bee and The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society

I’ve finished two very different books this week, though both do connect to war.  First was, Little Bee by Chris Cleave.  This novel focuses on a young Nigerian girl who has adopted that name for herself.  The story starts with Little Bee just being released from an Immigration detention centre in England.  I don’t want to say much more about the book, as much of the power comes from the way the book unfolds (as made clear on the blurb on the inside cover).  It was a difficult read at points, but very, very powerful and special.  I knew I’d love it when I opened it up in the bookstore and read the first sentence: “Most days I wish I was a British Pound coin instead of an African girl.”

Usually, I read books and then pass them onto the Artsy Mama if I think she might like them, but this time around she read The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society first and told me – well, more like demanded that I read it immediately.  It had been on my radar since it’s publication, but I’d been holding off buying it.  I didn’t enjoy it quite as much as the Artsy Mama did, but it was a great read, really quick with a whole range of interesting and often quirky characters.

And there was so exciting news last week – I won some books from Melanie at The Indextrious Reader.  They all look good, but I think I’ll read The Sister first as it’s one I’ve been interested for awhile.

photo of the day: will

review: sacred games

I’ve finally finished Sacred Games, and what a fantastic book it is!  It’s just a sprawling novel, very Dickensian in its scope and interwoven stories, and a completely enjoyable read.

The novel focus on Sartaj Singh, a police inspector, who is stuck in a middling position with little to no hope of a long overdue promotion.  An anonymous tip leads him to crime lord Ganesh Gaitonde, who has returned to India after spending many years abroad and is holed up in a bunker.  This is just the starting point of a truly epic novel as Singh become involved in an investigation about Gaitonde’s return to India.  Interspersed with Singh’s investigation of that case and others are Gaitonde’s own story of how he became one of the most powerful gangsters in India.

The stories overlap and intertwine and things you thought weren’t all that important are reintroduced at a later point in the book.  Chandra carefully weaves his plot so that all the strands connect, though often in random and unexpected ways.  My one complaint with the book is that I felt there was too much of an emphasis on this right towards the end of the book in the chapter entitled”Two Deaths in Cities Far from Home.”

The characters are all well-rounded, full of flaws and failings, and Gaitonde, in particular, is a captivating creation, a powerful man, but one with deep feelings of insecurity and loneliness.  What I also loved was the sense of place that Chandra captured throughout, in his use of language and quotes and songs and smells.  It isn’t a world that I think I would want to live in, but I certainly enjoyed observing it as a fly on the wall.

photo of the day: the wall

Last weekend the Artsy Mama, my aunt and I visited the War Museum.  I’d been wanting to visit the museum for quite some time, and when I found out about the WWI Trench Life exhibit, I really wanted to see it before it closed as part of my research for that project I mentioned in my last post.   I’m hoping to post more images and an overview of our visit soon, but one image that has stayed with me was a magnetic wall that allowed people to share their thoughts about war.

reviews: we wasn’t pals and generals die in bed

I’ve been doing some research for a project I’m working on.  It’s taken me back to WWI readings.  I had trouble, after leaving academia, with reading anything in this vein.  It made me… pine is as good a word as any, I suppose, to describe the feeling I had in the pit of my stomach anytime I thought of the work I’d left behind.  I’m relieved to say that that feelings has left me now, that I can now read these works without becoming regretful or feeling as if I had somehow betrayed the important experiences recorded in those works that touched me so deeply.  I think part of that stems from the fact that I’ve found a new outlet for my work.

I’ve been doing quite a bit of research over the past couple of months, but the last few days I’ve made my way through two books that have really stayed with me: We Wasn’t Pals and Generals Die in Bed.  I’d read Harrison’s book several years ago, but only selections from We Wasn’t Pals.

Harrison’s book is a harrowing account of line on the front lines during WWI.  It is a straight-forward and direct narrative, with little “literary frills” as noted in the introduction to my copy of the book.  There are some very graphic scenes, most particularly the moment in which during a raid the narrator stabs a German soldier with his bayonet and then cannot get it out.  Harrison’s novel strips away much of the sentimentality of other narratives, particularly about the comradery between men.  There is some connection between the men, but he also shows the way in which each man is very much alone in his struggle to survive.

We Wasn’t Pals is a collection of poetry and pose written by Canadians during the First World War.  I wasn’t overly familar with most of the work in this collection, and the introduction notes that much of this work has been overlooked.  There is a good range of selections in this collection, focusing on different aspects of life in the trenches.  Two selections that particularly stood out were “The German Prisoner” by James Hanley and “The Strange-Looking Man” by Fanny Kemble Johnson – the former because of the uncomfortable  brutality Hanley is able to capture in his tale of two soldiers who lose their way in the fog and who enact the insanity of war on a German prisoner who stumbles into the shell hole they are hiding in, and the latter because of the fable-like quality lent to this story about life after the war and its consequences.

review: the sweetness at the bottom of the pie

I am still making my way through Sacred Games – I know it seems it is taking forever (and it is), but I am enjoying it very much and I’m actually glad that I’m able to stay so long in the world Vikram Chandra has created.

I was away last weekend and on the train for quite some time and I didn’t want to carry Sacred Games with me all weekend.  That lead me to a recent purchase: The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie.  I’d read a few good reviews on the blogs so I purchased it and then the next day found several articles about this little publishing phenomenon in different papers.

Alan Bradley’s first novel focuses on the precious Flavia.  She’s eleven and lives with her father and her two older sisters in a country house in England in the 1950s.  She has a gift for chemistry, and discovers a flair for investigating when a body is discovered in the cucumber patch of her family’s garden.

I’m afraid that the curse of too much hype has struck for me again.  Bradley’s novel seemed right up my street with the country house mystery, and Flavia sounds like an interesting heroine to develop this story (really a whole series around).  It was charming at times, and I did feel like Bradley captured the right tone throughout, but it fell a bit flat for me, and I expect that is because I’d had too high expectations.  I think another issue I had was that I found the solution far too easy to spot, with not enough different characters with motives.  Perhaps if there had been more of mystery to this whodunnit, it would have lived up to all of the hype.

I think I would watch for the second in the series as I think there’s a lot of potential.  I just didn’t find it lived up to that in this first volume in the series.