The Week That Was

Another week, and looking back over my photos it seems to have been quite food focused...

The Hare with Amber Eyes - Edmund de Waal

The Hare with Amber Eyes is one of those books I have been hearing/reading/seeing lots of little tid bits about but I hadn't actually read a comprehensive review of the book when I picked it up for myself. After finishing it I can imagine it being one of those books that you either fall in love with - or you don't. I am definitely in the "fallen" category!
The Hare with Amber Eyes is the story of a collection of netsuke - small, ornamental Japanese carvings which were originally collected by a member of the author's family in Paris in the 1800's. The book tells the story of how the netsuke collection were handed down among the generations of the family until the author himself came across them in the home of his great uncle in Tokyo in the 1960's. I actually first thought the premise of the book sounded a little dull - how much story could there really be behind a collection of figurines??  It turns out - quite a big one. de Waal writes beautifully about the history of his family during two world wars, Hitler's rise to power and the persecution of the Jewish people and how the family hangs on to the netsuke, a final symbol of their wealth and prosperity. The geographic range of the story helps to make the book even more captivating as you are taken through Paris, Vienna and Tokyo.
The beginning and ending are definitely the strongest parts of the book and although some of the middle bits sagged a little for me I was still hooked by this story and the way in which it was told.

The Week That Was...

I can't believe how fast the weeks are flying by - I've already had invitations for Christmas celebrations with some friends and all the gift brochures are starting to arrive in the mail...

Despite the Christmas craziness starting to kick into gear I have had some time for tea drinking and reading and the past weekend was the first one in ages that my boy and I had to ourselves. We went out for breakfast, went shopping, drank wine and generally lazed around - just perfect!

Annabel - Kathleen Winter

Annabel was, in my view deservedly so, shortlisted for this years Orange Prize for Fiction, a prize eventually won by The Tiger's Wife (again, a book I thought definitely deserved to be there). It is also one of those books that has been languishing in my "To Be Blogged About" pile so I fear this will be less of a review and more of a reflection on my feelings about the book.
To put it simply - I loved it. It was a challenging book in many respects, content and style being up there but I felt that Winter held the reader's hand (and not in a patronising way) as she leads us through her vision for this book.
The book starts in 1968 in the remote coastal community of Labrador in the far north-east of Canada. Like Sarah Moss in Night Waking Winter does a brilliant job of setting the scene of a remote and isolated landscape which is so important for the story. In this community Jacinta Blake gives birth to her first baby, a baby that has no clear male or female sexual organs. Jacinta and her husband, Treadway, make a decision to raise their baby as a boy - Wayne -  but, particularly for Jacinta, there are always flashes of the little girl Wayne might have been. As Wayne reaches puberty his body starts to change in ways which awaken his dreams and thoughts about who he is, and his place in his family and his community.
I found this to be an amazing book, thought provoking and beautiful - I am definitely looking forward to Winter's next piece of fiction.

Reading Madame Bovary - Amanda Lohrey

I fully admit to being drawn to this book by it's title and the gorgeous cover. I have said it before, but I will say it again - I am a publishers dream!
Reading Madame Bovary is a collection of short stories by Australian author, Amanda Lohrey, published last year and read oh so long ago by me but only now being dug out from the "to be reviewed on blog" pile.
The book is pitched as a collection which "explores the dilemmas of modern life" and I found something in almost every story and character that I was able to relate to in some way.
Each of the stories is written impeccably - they feel timed just right. Lohrey talks about the stories being quite long for the traditional short story form and how she envisaged some of the stories actually being written as novels. This depth of characterisation and plot development is obvious - I found myself wishing that some of the stories were novel length - I just didn't want them to end.
For anyone who thinks you may be interested in reading this one I recommend you listen to the interview, or read the transcript of Lohrey talking on The Book Show for ABC Radio National - reading this interview has made me want to go back and read these stories all over again. A beautiful collection.

The Week That Was...

Pigeon English - Stephen Kelman

Pigeon English is one of the shortlisted book for this years Man Booker Prize and it would have to be the first book from the list that I have been disappointed in.
Pigeon English has been compared to Room (which I was also disappointed in) and The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time (which I loved completely) so I went into the read thinking I had a 50/50 chance of coming out with a winner. I think the only real reason for the comparison between the three books is that they all use a child as the key narrator.
The narrator of Pigeon English is Harrison Opuku, a year 7 student living in the housing projects of London. Harrison, his mother and older sister Lydia have immigrated to England from Ghana and the rest of their family, including their father and 1 year old sister remain in Ghana. The book opens with the murder of a boy who Harrison knew in a distant way:

Me and the dead boy were only half friends, I didn't see him very much because he was older and he didn't go to my school. He could ride his bike with no hands and you never even wanted him to fall off. I said a prayer for him inside my head. It just said sorry.

Harrison and one of his friends become fixated on trying to work out who killed the boy through the use of their amateur detectives skills and knowledge. Harrison introduces us to his neighbourhood, his friends and his enemies at school and his family. It is through his often naive, trusting and young eyes that we begin to see what may have happened to the boy who died and what might be going on in Harrison's own family that he is not aware of. The pigeon of the title is in fact a pigeon that lives around Harrison's tower complex, Harrison sees the pigeon as a friend and ally and the pigeon (who can speak english as the title suggests) sees itself as a type of guardian for Harrison.

I loved Harrison and his voice in this book - I loved hearing from him and about him and I loved seeing his perspective of the world. For some reason though this was not enough for me to fall in love with this book and be carried away by the story. I found myself feeling bored in places, and then extremely engaged and interested in others - maybe it was this lack of consistency that made this book a little disappointing for me.

The Week That Was...

Stasiland - Anna Funder

I am definitely going through a German reading phase at the moment so if any one has any suggestions for great books set in this country could you please send them my way.
Stasiland is a book I have had on my shelf for quite a while - since it was first published actually. I had caught the author doing a radio interview as part of her tour for the books release and I was fascinated by the subject area but also the way Funder spoke about her research for and her process of writing the book. I eagerly rushed out to buy a copy but then like so many other books, it was pushed aside for other reading choices - a victim of the "so many books, not enough time" dilemma we face on a daily basis.
Luckily for me Stasiland was one of the required reads for a course I was doing this semester on creative non-fiction as part of my masters so it has finally made it to the read pile of my bookshelves.
Stasiland tells several personal stories of the devasting impact of the Stasi (the East German secret service) in the life of the German Democratic Republic. Funder has interviewed people from all sides of the story, GDR citizens who were affected by the regime and  Stasi informants and members who carried out the work.
In the 1990's Funder was working for a television station in Germany when she became interested in the stories of the people who had been ruled by the Stasi:

Later, Frau Hollitzer told me about Miriam,  a young woman whose husband has died in a Stasi remand cell nearby. It was rumoured the Stasi orchestrated the funeral, to the point of substituting an empty coffin for a full one, and cremating the body to destroy any evidence of the cause of death. I imagined paid-off pallbearers pretending to struggle under the weight of an empty coffin, or perhaps genuinely struggling beneath a coffin filled with eighty kilos of old newspapers and stones. I imagined not knowing whether your husband hanged himself, or whether someone you now pass in the street killed him. I thought I would like to speak with Miriam, before my imaginings set like false memories.



The transparency of Funder's research and interviews are shown through out the book - Funder herself is very much present as a character in the book and her emotions of shock, anger, frustration and sadness echo those that we are feeling as a reader as we hear about the atrocious acts committed against the East German people under the Stasi. There is also a strong tone of resilience and hope to the book which helps to balance it and adds to the feeling of authenticity and genuineness.

Funder's writing style is engaging, honest and lively - you can clearly see each of the people as they tell their stories and Funder has a lovely sense of humour which comes across as nice relief in some stages of the book.

I would recommend this book to anyone that has a slight interest in this period of history - it has certainly added to my knowledge and understand and has only left me wanting to learn more.

The Week That Was....

I can't believe it is October already! Where has 2011 gone?? I have had my head in the books this past week - both for pleasure and for study purposes. My last two assignments for the year are due in over the next two weeks - then it will be on to more of the pleasure kind of reading! Spring is supposed to have arrived here on the east coast of Australia - and it did peep it's head in for a little while - and then it crept away again to leave us with an awful, wintery long weekend. Here's hoping for more sun this week!