"When your fight has purpose--to free you from something, to interfere on the behalf of an innocent--it has a hope of finality. When the fight is about unraveling--when it is about your name, the places to which your blood is anchored, the attachment of your name to some landmark or event--there is nothing but hate, and the long, slow progression of people who feed on it and are fed it, meticulously, by the ones who come before them. Then the fight is endless, and comes in waves and waves, but always retains its capacity to surprise those who hope against it."
Winner, Orange Prize 2011
Tea Obreht was the youngest author ever to win the Orange Prize. She certainly has stormed onto the literary scene. I was anxious to read the
Tiger's Wife
to see if it lived up to the hype. Many times I don't enjoy a book very much when everyone is talking about it, which is why I try to avoid reviews until I've read it because of potential spoilers. But it's hard not to notice when a book is winning or being nominated for several book awards.
Set in a generic province in and around Yugoslavia, the book alternates between Natalia's life and that of her grandfather's, with, of course, some intermingling of the two. They are both physicians, and both timelines are times of war in the region. One aspect of the novel is that I guess you could say it has elements of magical realism, something I'm not really a fan of normally. I enjoyed it with this book, though, because it also had a folktale-ish feel to it as well.
Throughout the novel, there is no coherent timeline at all, it's all over the place. At first this bothered me but then I realized I didn't care. The stories were magnificent. It almost felt like a group of interconnected short stories, though they weren't told chronologically.
My favorite Orange winner so far is
Bel Canto
by Ann Patchett, and no, this novel did not surpass it. But, Obreht is so young; she has years ahead of her to finetune and hone her craft. I will look forward to whatever she writes next.
"Frost had built on the dead grass, and it skirled beneath his feet. If not for this sound he'd have thought himself struck deaf, owing to the magnitude of the surrounding silence. All the night's noises had stopped. The whole valley seemed to reflect his shock. He heard only his footsteps and the wolf-girl's panting complaint."
I really wanted to read
Train Dreams
after it was embroiled in the "no Pulitzer" debate. Hey, it was only 117 pages, so I knew it wouldn't take me long to read. It's easily read in under two hours. As I write this, I'm still trying to decide between a 3.5 and a 4.5 star rating. I either loved it, or it was under my 4 star par. I guess I'll just have to average the two and give it a 4.
Why am I waffling? Part of me loved the story, the writing, and the story of the life of Robert Grainier. Johnson definitely packs a big punch in such a small book. I admired how the author gave such a wide sweep of history of the American West and an individual's life in so few pages. What I didn't like was the mystical aspects of the book regarding the wolves. It was a little weird.
All in all, I would have been neutral on this title winning the Pulitzer. I've certainly read winners that I thought were much worse than this book. I'm definitely glad I read it, if anything to ponder why the Pulitzer Board chose not to pick this one.
He first came to the Iris one day just before the beginning of the summer season.
I was really excited when I received
Hotel Iris
from Picador in the mail. I hadn't requested it, but because I loved
The Housekeeper and the Professor
so much last year, I knew I would want to read this one. The problem was, though, that I didn't know what it was about. It has a very different 'love story' -- one that didn't appeal to me at all.
Mari is a seventeen year old girl working at the front desk of her mother's hotel when she meets a middle aged man whose voice and manner intrigue her. As they get to know each other, it leads to a sexual relationship involving SM. It wasn't extremely graphic, but still just not my cup of tea nonetheless.
I still enjoy Ogawa's writing style and the translation was great, but I just didn't like the subject matter so unfortunately I was extremely disappointed. However, I'd still read another Ogawa novel -- I just would learn more about the storyline first.
"Those Impressionists," she said, "they certainly knew about color. And about light and shade. Different kinds of shade: thinner shadows that let the light through, and heavier, denser ones. And it's as if Monet made this garden to show the world how he saw colors. How he saw their power, their potential, and their purpose. I think he wanted to show that the world is color. That life itself is color. That if we can just see the colors, really see them, life will be beautiful. And meaningful. Because beauty has a value of its own, that"s how I see it anyway."
- p. 37
"People who read books,' he went on, "tend to be dispensable. Extremely."
- p. 48
Useful or dispensable? A life of choice or no choice? And what if your own choices led you to have to give of your own body to the 'needed' until your 'final donation'?
I love dystopian fiction, and this book was no exception. It reminded me quite a bit of
Never Let Me Go
by Kazuo Ishiguro, so if you enjoyed that book, you'll probably like this one as well. Reading books like this is always a reminder of the ways society could go horribly wrong, and sadly, I wouldn't be surprised if parts of the book actually do come to pass someday.
Dorrit, age 50, has reached an age where she is now considered dispensable because she has no children or parents to take care of and because she is a writer, which is considered an unessential occupation. The dispensables in The Unit are provided for in every way, a nice apartment, exercise facilities, and entertainment venues, etc. Except that they are monitored 24/7, and of course, they may never leave The Unit. Dorrit makes great friends here, and in some ways her life is better than when she was on the outside, but, obviously, her life and her body are not her own. She is essentially a commodity of the State.
The book raises some excellent ethical questions. Is a person's life itself precious and valuable, or is it only what they can contribute to society that is deemed worthwhile? My view will always be the former.
How obtained: I checked this book out from my local library.
2006 (Swedish), 2009 for the English translation; 268 pp.
It was fun to read both
The Hunger Games
and
Catching Fire
back-to-back for the read-a-thon. I'm glad I didn't have a long wait between the first two books of the trilogy, but obviously I'll have a longer wait for the third book to come out. The bad part is, the cliffhanger between 2 and 3 is quite a bit greater than from 1 to 2 in my opinion. I do look forward to reading the next book.
I liked this sequel about the same as the first book and both books received a rating of 4 stars. As I said in my post about
The Hunger Games
, though, I still feel there are some better written young adult dystopian books out there. However, this series, though a bit dark and violent, will definitely keep you going until the very last page.
2009, 391 pp.
Disclosure: I received this book from a promotional company (but after I had already purchased
The Hunger Games
).
I read this book for the read-a-thon, and I must say it was an excellent choice as it was quite a page turner. This book is taking the internet by storm, and while I did enjoy it, I didn't quite love the book.
I'm not going to go through the plot as quite a few people have read it, or if they haven't, there are plenty of sources to find that information. I will say that the plot was, in my view, the best part of the book. As I said above, it's quite a page turner, but although I didn't think the writing was bad per se, I didn't feel it was up to par with
The Giver
by Lois Lowry or
The House of the Scorpion
by Nancy Farmer. The romance angle in the book irritated me a bit. I understand to a degree why it was necessary to the plot, but I thought it could have been a little more well done. Another minor irritation was the naming of the characters in the book. I suppose it was done on purpose, but I felt it distracted me from the story every time I came upon a strange name. I've never really noticed it in books like
Lord of the Rings
, etc., but in this book the names just seemed a bit silly.
Even with all that said, I did like the book quite a bit and plan on reading the entire trilogy. I hate to be too negative when I actually enjoyed it, but since it's received so many rave reviews, I just thought I'd explain why my rating was a little lower.
2008, 374 pp.
Disclosure: I purchased this book for my personal library.
"When your fight has purpose--to free you from something, to interfere on the behalf of an innocent--it has a hope of finality. When the fight is about unraveling--when it is about your name, the places to which your blood is anchored, the attachment of your name to some landmark or event--there is nothing but hate, and the long, slow progression of people who feed on it and are fed it, meticulously, by the ones who come before them. Then the fight is endless, and comes in waves and waves, but always retains its capacity to surprise those who hope against it."
It was fun to read both
The Hunger Games
and
Catching Fire
back-to-back for the read-a-thon. I'm glad I didn't have a long wait between the first two books of the trilogy, but obviously I'll have a longer wait for the third book to come out. The bad part is, the cliffhanger between 2 and 3 is quite a bit greater than from 1 to 2 in my opinion. I do look forward to reading the next book.
I read this book for the read-a-thon, and I must say it was an excellent choice as it was quite a page turner. This book is taking the internet by storm, and while I did enjoy it, I didn't quite love the book.
