The Boat - Nam Lee

The Boat by Nam Le is a collection of engaging short stories that give us insight in to seven very different sets of lives.

The first opening story, ‘Love and Honor and Pity and Pride and Compassion and Sacrifice’, features a Vietnamese character named Nam who is struggling to complete his Iowa Writer's Workshop master's as his father comes for a tense visit, the first since an earlier estrangement shattered the family.

In Halflead Bay, an Australian mother begins an inevitable submission to multiple sclerosis as her teenage son prepares for the biggest soccer game of his life.

The narrator of Meeting Elise, a successful but ailing artist in Manhattan, mourns his dead lover as he anticipates meeting his daughter for the first time since she was an infant.

A child assassin in Columbia is coming to terms with the warrant of his best friend.

Another story, titled simply "Hiroshima," traces the life of a young Japanese girl moved to the safety of the nearby countryside in the days immediately preceding the dropping of the atomic bomb.

The next story follows a young American woman’s search for self-purpose when she visits Iran to support a college friend who is fighting against their way of life to have women’s rights recognized.

After this whirlwind tour, Nam Le returns for the finale to Vietnam for his title story, "The Boat." Not surprisingly, this one is a flight and survival story, focusing on Mai, a young girl cast adrift for days in the Pacific with two hundred other refugees on a smugglers' trawler that has lost its engines.

I picked up this book from Angus and Robertson as part of their ‘50 books you can’t put down’ promotion. From reading the back of the book I didn’t realise they were separate short stories – I thought they were going to be related or intertwined somehow, but even though they were totally separate stories, they were brilliantly written. Each story has the same author, but Le has a gift for writing each story in a totally different writing style that best suits the theme of the story.

Each story was engaging (but some more so than others depending on your personal interests) and it left me wishing that I could read more of each of them to see how things turned out for them.

I would recommend this book as a quick read – nothing really too heavy but still very thought provoking and culturally rich.

Eat Pray Love - Elizabeth Gilbert

It’s not often I say that I really disliked a book, but this was one of them...

At the age of thirty-one, Elizabeth Gilbert moved with her husband to the suburbs of New York and began trying to get pregnant, only to realize that she wanted neither a child nor a husband. Three years later, after a protracted divorce, she embarked on a yearlong trip of recovery, with three main stops: Rome, for pleasure (mostly gustatory, with a special emphasis on gelato); an ashram outside of Mumbai, for spiritual searching; and Bali, for "balancing."

I think the idea for the storyline had potential, it’s just that Gilbert made it in to a story designed to make housewives going through a mid-life crisis and who are depressed about their lives feel like they have hope. As a female approaching 30 I found that really insulting, and I hope that if I am ever faced with the situation of an unhappy marriage that I would not turn to an (unimaginative) novel for inspiration. The most depressing part about this is that as a ‘reflection of her life’ I can’t help but think that as soon as she gets home from her travels she will fall in to the same old traps and become unhappy again. She didn’t really learn anything, she just ate her way through depression then had a passionate affair to try and help her forget her broken relationship back home. Not very motivational I must say.

Now, I don’t think it is fair of me to say that I hated the WHOLE book –her adventures in Rome wasn’t totally unbearable to read through, but once she got to India I was practically in a boredom induced coma! So I pretty much skipped this whole section and went straight to Bali and woke up again slightly.

My advice to those interested in reading it is this: There has been so much hype about it that you are most likely going to read it. If you go in with a lower set of expectations than I did then maybe you won’t find it as sufferable as I did. All I know is that I NEVER throw away books, and this one went straight in to the local St Vinnies charity bin.

Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress - Dai Sijie

The Cultural Revolution of Chairman Mao Zedong altered Chinese history in the 1960s and '70s, forcibly sending hundreds of thousands of Chinese intellectuals to peasant villages for "re-education." This short novel is by a writer who was himself re-educated in the '70s and tells how two young men endured years of banishment, emphasizing the power of literature to free the mind. Dai Sijie's unnamed 17-year-old protagonist and his best friend, Luo, are doctors' sons, and as a result are condemned to serve four years in a remote mountain village, carrying pails of excrement daily up a hill.

 The two friends are good at storytelling, and the village headman commands them to reenact cinema shows for the villagers, reciting the plots and dialogue of movies. When another city boy leaves the mountains, the friends steal a suitcase full of forbidden books he has been hiding, knowing he will be afraid to call the authorities. Enchanted by the prose of a host of European writers, they dare to tell the story of The Count of Monte Cristo to the village tailor and to read Balzac to his shy and beautiful young daughter. Luo, who adores the Little Seamstress, dreams of transforming her from a simple country girl into a sophisticated lover with his foreign tales. He succeeds but lives to regret the consequences. 

Sijie has a beautiful writing style and it is a shame this novel is so short as I could have kept reading on, although towards the end it almost lost me as it changed writing styles drastically, but thankfully found it’s way back.

The topic of the Mao dynasty is very intriguing to me and this story give a light-hearted insight in to one of the many different stories.

This book was a bargain for only $5 at a second-hand book fair, and now that I have read it once I think it will sit in my bookcase until it gets lent out to someone new as although I enjoyed the story and read it quite quickly, I don’t think it is one I could read again soon.

Almost French - Sarah Turnbull

Almost French is an insightful and funny memoir that gives a firsthand look at the struggles faced when Australian Sarah Turnbull tries to settle into a city that is infamous for their chilly attitude to ‘outsiders’, and  gives a glimpse of the true nature of Parisians and daily life in their gorgeous city. 

Sarah has taken a year off from her job with a TV network to move to Paris has a new lover, Frederic. This novel is not so much about love (although from the story you can definitely see why Sarah was attracted to, and fell in love with, Frederic), but about new life and adventures.

Sarah battle to assimilate to a new culture is humorously written. A perfect example of this is when Sarah is running to the bakery one Saturday morning to get fresh bread for breakfast. On her way out, Frederic catches a glimpse of her and nearly has a heart attack. "Are you going out like that, wearing your gymnastic pantaloons?" he asks. Sarah completely oblivious to his horror says, "Yeah, I'm just going to the bakery". Frederic says "But, that's not nice for the baker man...".

She also writes of finding work, making friends, surviving dinner parties and adapting to the rhythms and pace of life with a Parisian boyfriend, all the while with humor and a developing sense of wisdom.

Almost French is still one of my all time favourite books – a great read that will be sure to inspire most to visit the city of love.

Still Alice - Lisa Genova

Alice Howland is an esteemed psychology professor at Harvard, living a comfortable life in Cambridge with her husband, John, arguing about the usual things (making quality time together, their daughter's move to L.A.) when the first symptoms of Alzheimer's begin to emerge. First, Alice can't find her Blackberry, then she becomes hopelessly disoriented in her own town. Alice is shocked to be diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer's (she had suspected a brain tumor or menopause), after which her life begins steadily to unravel. She loses track of rooms in her home, resigns from Harvard and eventually cannot recognize her own children. 

I found this book so much scarier than any horror themed book I could find. The brutal facts of Alzheimer's are heartbreaking, and it's impossible not to feel for Alice and her loved ones. After reading this book, every time I misplace my keys or struggle to find the right work I’m looking for, in the back of my mind I am thinking about this book (although there as far as I know my fears are totally unfounded and I have nothing to worry about at this stage really).

I think Lisa Genova handled such a sensitive subject quite well. It would be easy to let a book about this topic lead in to a ‘pity party’ and while you do feel deeply sorry for the characters involved, it also shows how each of them cope and continue to live their lives.

Still Alice was a great novel that I think will appeal to most readers, not just those close to the matter. Definitely worth a read.

Things I want my Daughters to Know - Elizabeth Noble

Things I want my daughters to know is a tear-jerking novel about Barbara Forbes, a mother of four, who is battling terminal cancer and decides to write a journal for her four daughters. In the year following Barbara's death, her daughters draw strength from her words and from each other as they move forward with their lives. Lisa, the eldest, is advised to "let someone look after her for a change. Jennifer, "fragile and hard to reach," struggles with an unraveling marriage. Free-spirited Amanda is thrown for a loop by a family secret, and teenage Hannah, experiencing her first taste of rebellion, is reminded that she still has a lot of growing up to do.

Elizabeth Noble is a fantastic writer, and if you haven’t read her other best seller The Reading Group, then I advise you to also pick this one up. She has a fantastic writing style. The characters and story are painted perfectly so that by the end of the book you feel like you have known the characters for years and are on their journey with them.

The story line is a sad but hopeful story, and to be honest while reading this book I did actually pick up the phone and ring my own mother just to say ‘Hi’ and ‘I love you’. And while the main story point is based on a sad event, Elizabeth Noble makes sure to include her humour in as well.

I definitely would recommend this book as a great weekend read, but make sure you keep the tissues handy!