My Reading Journal 2017: May 2017

Wednesday, May 31, 2017

Audiobook
Cambodian author
Semi-autobiographical
Originally Published in 2013
Review: A somber, spiritual, partially auto-biographical story. The daughter of a king in Cambodia survives 4 years in work camps, loses family, loses hope, is tortured and starved. Somehow she survives, and this book is written to memorialize the horrors wrought by the Kmer Rouge. A tough, yet touching read. It is hard to face the cruelties which are wrought, and continue to be wrought in our world, upon fellow humans!

Audiobook
Originally published in 2012
Italian author
Volume One in a four volume set
Review: I wasn't sure at first if this was going to turn into a sappy, girly friendship, happy ending story. Nope! I kept feeling drawn onward and ended up being impressed. It is a relationship story between two girls starting in childhood, yet it is much more. It is the story of two smart girls caught in their local culture which strives valiantly to keep them from leaving socially and intellectually. Such an emotional, subtle battle! It is the story of the superficial versus the profound, of emerging whole versus being subsumed, and of the painfully confusing process of sorting it all out. How does one allow the life of the mind to fly freely while simultaneously finding a way to remain among one's cultural home and stay sane. I wholeheartedly look forward to the second of this four volume set.

Japanese author
Originally published in 1958
Nobel Prize winning author
Review: There is a unique rhythm to the prose in a Japanese novel which I enjoy tremendously. This novella is a tale of the inextricable ties that bind the dead and the living. A young man's father dies and yet the tangled web of his life continues to entangle the son. The story revolves around the ancient rite of the tea ceremony with a focus on the vessels created by early masters. Kawabata seems to reveal the ties from ancient times carried forward, in both tea ware and relationships.

Early Review edition for LibraryThing.com
#14 in the Mary Russell series
US author
Mystery/Suspense
Originally published in 2016
Review: This was the best installment of the Mary Russell series in a while. The reader is treated to a return to the basic characters with the added treat of some hitherto unknown personal histories. Full of secrets, gasps, tension and daredevil adventure, this read is delightful!

French author
Originally published in 1970, translation in 2016
Open Letter Series
Review: Reading this novella was an experience akin to reading "Waiting For Godot". I was left feeling confused and disturbed, with only two certainties. The world is full of chaos and uncertainty, and communication is everything. The plot, as nearly as I could make out, was about assassins sent by the Communist party to execute a Jew who had discussed the concept of freedom with one of their members. Duras is a master of language and intentional prose. I do not think she misplaces a single word. Powerful, difficult to decipher and to take emotionally, and remarkable in its impact!

Early Review edition for LibraryThing.com
US author
Originally published in 2017
Review: This would have been a 4 or 5 star psychological thriller based on the plot. However, I am tired of the now ubiquitous jumping around in time. If it adds to the story, great. I think it detracted in this case. The plot was psychological, taut, and immediately engaging. The characters were psychologically fascinating. Couldn't put it down!

Originally published in 1957
Russian author
Review: What can I say about a writer who can take the time to include the following sentence after his two characters fall asleep for the night: "Presently all were asleep again. It was a pity nobody saw the display in the empty street, where the auroral breeze wrinkled a large luminous puddle, making of the telephone wires reflected in it illegible lines of black zigzags." He is eloquent, lyrical, evocative and more. That doesn't even touch on the story itself, which is an apparently timeless tale of an immigrant, a nostalgic and brilliant one, who is eternally underestimated and made a caricature by his intellectual peers & colleagues. Pnin is a sort of Charlie Chaplinesque figure. (in fact, Nabokov writes of Pnin's own scorn for Chaplin) Only the narrator seems to communicate a sense of the tragi-comic nature of Pnin's life. A bittersweet read, with a message to us all!

Audiobook
US author
Originally published in 2010
Set in Butte, Montana
Review: Good golly! Ivan Doig sure knows how to tell a story! Set in Butte, Montana, this is the story of a character I would describe as an all grown up Yom Sawyer. Morry has a big heart, a daring spirit and is a quick thinker which tends to get him into and out of tricky situations. The story pits a copper mining company against the union in a bit of a "high noon" atmosphere. It all comes down to a song...yep, a song. It has a love story, lots of tense situations, an urban legend librarian and more. Wonderful read!