The Light Between Oceans - M.L. Stedman

Title: The Light Between Oceans
Author: M.L. Stedman
Publisher: Black Swan
Release date: 2012
Pages: 461

 

* You could kill a bloke with rules, Tom knew that. And yet sometimes they were what stood between man and savagery, between man and monsters. The rules that said you took a prisoner rather than killed a man. The rule that said you let the stretchers cart the enemy off from no man's land as well as your own men.*
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A boat washes up on the shores of a remote lighthouse keeper's island. It holds a dead man and a crying baby. The only two islanders, Tom and his wife Izzy, are about to make a devastating decision.
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 * And Janus Rock, linked only by the store boat four times a year, dangled off the edge of the cloth like a loose button that might easily plummet to Antartica.*

In the Australian post-war world, life goes on. People who experienced the Great War directly or indirectly try and go on with their life although nothing will ever be the same. In Point Partageuse, situated on the western part of the continent, there are few men and the prospects are rather dull for young girls. However, when Isabel meets Tom Sherbourne, a young and handsome young man who has just come back from the battlefield, she is convinced that everything is about to change. She decides to marry him and they begin a new life together for the better and for the worse. The first part sets the background for the story and the characters relationship. It is a good introduction including historical facts, geographical details and personal information about the characters.

Tom is lighthouse keeper on Janus, so Isabel follows him, but life on Janus is lonely and harsh. Like the characters, the reader will experience mixed feelings about this place, at the same time beautiful and threatening, magical and oppressive. Page after page, we discover what it means to be a lighthouse keeper and live outside the world all year round, apart from a yearly visit on the continent. Isabel and Tom live for the Light and for their mutual love, but things do not always go as expected… and people sometimes make bad decisions. When they find a boat holding a baby and a dead man, Tom and Isabel have to make a decision which is about to change their lives forever… and that of many other people as well.

The second part of the book takes place on Janus. The rhythm is rather slow and we can feel the loneliness and the repetitiveness of the life on the small island. We also get to know the characters and the developments of their relationships, which slowly deteriorates until the ‘day of the miracle’: the day on which the boat was washed up on the shore. The moment is miraculous in Isabel’s eyes, but wretched in Tom’s eyes. They have to make a decision, but no option seems right. M.L. Stedman describes beautifully the dilemma they face and their existential thoughts: what is right? What has to be done in the baby’s interest? How to respect one’s duty without destroying someone else?

The third part takes place back on the continent after everything collapsed. Although we felt something would eventually go wrong, it is heart-rending to see it happen. The characters are kept apart and each of them has got its own way of responding to grief. For their part, the readers are torn between two sides. We want to hate the characters who caused so much harm, but we understand them so well all the same that we end up confused. Like we knew that Tom and Isabel’s decision was a bad decision, we know the story cannot have a happy-ending, but cannot help hoping for one.

The Light Between Oceans is a very moving novel which you will either love or hate. There is no in between. The plot might seem too predictable and the characters too stereotypical to be realistic, but it raises important questions which can touch just about anybody. The author’s style is fluid and precise and we can see it evolve along the pages. The first part is rather factual and descriptive and it is rather difficult to know what the characters really feel, which creates a little suspense. In the third part, however, we discover the whole range of emotions felt by the various characters… and it will be difficult not to shed a tear. I recommend this novel to those who like beautiful if sad stories and want to discover a different kind of life.

The Detour - Gerbrand Bakker

Title: The Detour
Author: Gerbrand Bakker
Original Title: De Omweg (Dutch)
Translator: David Colmer 
Publisher: Vintage
Release date: 2010 (English translation: 2012)
Pages: 293

 

*Sticking a new cigarette in her mouth, she picked up the 'Collected Poems' and opened it at the contents page. She'd had this book for more than a decade - there were notes in it, the pages were stained, the dust jacket war torn - and now notices for the first time how short the section titled LOVE was and how long the last TIME AND ETERNITY. She started to cry.*
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A Dutch woman rents a remote farm in rural Wales. She says her name is Emilie. She has left her husband, having confessed to an affair.
In Amsterdam, her stunned husband forms a strange partnership with a detective who agrees to help him trace her. They board the ferry to Hull on Christmas Eve.
Back on the farm, a young man out walking with his dog injures himself and stays the night, then ends up staying longer. Yet something is deeply wrong. Does he know what he is getting himself into? And what will happen when her husband and the detective arrive?

Ach, writing a review of The Detour is not an easy task. Even if I finished it a while ago, I am still confused about it. No doubt, it is an unusual book which is not for everybody to read... I finished it, but did I enjoy it? I am not sure, but I would still say it was worth reading it. Perhaps because of this strangeness, which is present in the whole story and fascinated me until the last pages. Because it is something different from what we can expect reading the back cover summary.

We follow a Dutch woman, Emilie, who rents a farm in Wales after she left her husband. Slowly, we step in her new life, meeting geese, badgers, her favourite Emily Dickinson’s books, an unpleasant farmer, a curious baker, a chatty hairdresser, a strange doctor and a mysterious boy with his dog. Back in Amsterdam, the husband is investigating in order to find her with the help of a new policeman friend.

The plot is simple. Not a lot of action, not a lot of details, not a lot of explanations. The language is kept simple most of the time, be it in descriptions or in dialogues, and very sparse. The atmosphere is extremely strange. Who is Emilie? Why has she left her native country in order to rent a farm in the middle of nowhere? Who is this boy who stays with her for so long? And so on and so forth.

Gerbrand Bakker’s novel is full of symbolism and inter-textual references, which can be confusing for the readers who cannot interpret it. I must admit I felt rather lost all along the story, as we never really obtain definite answers to the hundreds of questions we ask ourselves. The end gives us a few clues, but many mysteries subsist. I had expected something big, something that would explain it all, but I must admit I was a little disappointed, although it is a nice way to end the story.

The best word to qualify this book would be enigmatic. We follow Emilie in a strange universe and take part to her everyday routine without knowing the whys and hows. Although we get to know her from the first page to the last one, she remains mysterious and so do the other characters and their actions. As I said before, there is not much action, which illustrates perfectly Emilie’s loneliness and her need to find an aim in her days. Meeting other people is nevertheless inevitable, even in such a remote place and, often, everybody knows everybody, which can be rather surprising and embarrassing.

The Detour is no doubt a wonderful book for those who can enjoy this kind of surreal atmosphere. However, many readers will probably get misled by its appearance: this small novel with few pages and apparently simple writing style is actually not so easy to understand; you might end up with more questions than before you even opened it.

My sister's keeper - Jodi Picoult

Title: My sister's keeper
Author: Jodi Picoult
Publisher: Hodder Paperbacks
Release date: 2009
Pages: 432

 

* You don't love someone because they're perfect, you love them in spite of the fact that they're not.*
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Sara Fitzgerald's daughter Kate is just two years old when she is diagnosed with a rare form of leukaemia. Reeling with the helpless shock of it, Sara knows she will do anything -- whatever it takes - to save her child. Then the tests results come back time and again to show that no one in their family is a match for Kate. If they are to find a donor for the crucial bone marrow transplant she needs, there is only one option: creating another baby, specifically designed to save her sister. For Sara, it seems the ideal solution. Not only does Kate live, but she gets a beautiful new daughter, Anna, too. Until the moment Anna hands Sara the papers that will rock her whole world. Because, aged thirteen, Anna has decided that she doesn't want to help Kate live any more. She is suing her parents for the rights to her own body.

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* If you have a sister and she dies, do you stop saying you have one? Or are you always a sister, even when the other half of the equation is gone? *

My sister’s keeper had been in my bookshelf for a while before I decided to read it. I was not convinced that I would like it – or rather, I was quite convinced that I would not like it – probably because of the plot. Anna is thirteen years old and her sister, Kate, suffers from a rare form of leukaemia. From the moment she was conceived, she was destined to help Kate survive. But Anna has had enough and decides to sue her parents for the right of her own body, although she knows that this decision will change their life forever.

When I read the summary, I thought Jodi Picoult’s novel was going to be one of these heart-rending stories where the author tries to make you cry from the beginning to the end; that it would be centred on Kate’s illness only to the detriment of the family and the characters; that the end would be predictable and contain no suspense. Luckily, I decided to start it anyway and I must say I was extremely surprise by how much I enjoyed it. The book was completely different from what I had imagined.

Of course, in such a story, illness has got a central part. However, I liked the was the author dealt with it because we could feel that she knew a lot about the topic although we did not have to read pages and pages of medical explanations. A few specific terms were used, but it was more to lead us into the setting than to really give information about leukaemia. So it is present along the whole story, but in the background.

We focus on Anna’s family, her own personality as well as her parents’, Kate’s and her brother’s and the relationships between these very realistic characters. Each short chapter is told by a different person, which enables us to have a different viewpoint on the events. It is an interesting narrative choice because it stops us from being on Anna’s side or against her. As the story unfolds and we share each of the characters’ experiences, we understand that such a situation is not as easy as it may seem: each person has got their reasons and sometimes there is perhaps no right or wrong.

The narrators are Anna, her parents and her brother Jesse, but we also have several chapters told by Campbell Alexander, Anna’s lawyer, and Julia Romano, the guardian ad litem appointed by the judge who has to decide what it better for the girl. Although I found it strange at the beginning, I then enjoyed having parts of the story told by characters that are not part of the family. I felt it brought reality to the story and diversion. In a way, it reminds us that no matter how hard the situation of a family is, other people around them also go on with their lives. One of the details that caught my attention was that Kate is not the narrator – except in one single chapter – despite the fact that she is the main actor in the story. I was a little disappointed at first, but after finishing it, I think it was a rather clever option.

As I said before, I appreciated the fact that the story was not tragic all the time. With such a theme, it was of course not going to be cheerful and merry, but several scenes are funny and will make us laugh. The timeline is not linear, as we have several flashbacks, which help us understand the character’s present actions.

Jodi Picoult also handles a theme which acquires more and more importance in our current life: genetic engineering. It is something subject to debate and controversy in the medical and political world nowadays and in is interesting to see how, in the story, it is also difficult to decide if it is right or wrong, good or bad. Although it does not occupy a central place in the story, several allusions are made to this matter.

The ending – which is probably what most readers will want to know before they start reading the novel – is not a happy one. Realistically, it cannot be a happy-ending. However, you will probably be taken aback by several twists and turns in the last pages, where the tension builds up until the last dramatic event occurs. I do not want to give away what happens, as it would spoil your reading, but this ending troubled me deeply. I still cannot decide if I like it or not but it clearly made me want to reread the novel with the new pieces of information I had. My sister’s keeper is an amazing novel and I was not able to put it down until I had read it all. The writing style is nice and draws us into the story, mixing different viewpoints, present and flashbacks and tragic events with comic moments. It is a perfectly balanced story and my best read in the year so far. Let us hope the cinematographic adaptation will live up to the book’s success!

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My sister's keeper has been adapted into a film. 

See my film review and comparison with the book.

The Book of Summers - Emylia Hall

Title: The Book of Summes
Author: Emylia Hall
Publisher: Headline Review
Release date: 2012
Pages: 324

 

* Family. A word that has always sat so uneasily with me. For other people it may mean rambling dinners with elbows on tables and old jokes kneaded and pulled like baking dough. Or dotty aunts and long-suffering uncles awkwardly shaped, shift dresses and crappy moustaches, the hard press of a wellmeant hug. Or just a house on a street. Handprints pushed into soft cement. The knotted, fraying ropes of an old swing on an apple bough. But for me? None of that. It's a word that undoes me. Like the snagging of a thread on a jumper that runs unravelling quickly, into the cup of your hand. *
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Beth Lowe has been sent a parcel. Inside is a letter telling her that Marika, her long-estranged mother, has died. There is also a scrapbook, the Book of Summers, it's stuffed with photographs and mementos compiled by her mother to record the seven glorious childhood summers Beth spend in rural Hungary. It was a time when she trod the tightrope between separated parents and two very different countries. And it was a time that came to the most brutal of ends the year Beth turned sixteen.
Since then, Beth hasn't allowed herself to think about those years of her childhood. But the arrival of The Book of Summers brings the past tumbling back into the present; as vivid, painful and vital as ever.

The Book of Summers caught my eye a long time ago, on the Waterstones' shelf, along with other summer reads. The back cover promised a trip to exotic Hungary, full of vivid descriptions and family mysteries and I must admit that, after eventually finishing it, I am rather disappointed.

Everything starts in England, when Beth receives a letter from Hungary, telling her that her mother Marika has died. With it comes the Book of Summers, which contains photographs of the seven wonderful holidays she spent in Hungary, before a tragic event put an end to this wonderful time.

In the first few pages already, we know that Marika has died. Most of the novel consists then of memories of Beth's life in England for a short time with both her parents, of her father and her in England and of her holiday in Hungary. Each chapter starts with the description of a picture, which reminds her of the summer it was taken and everything she experienced then, from the discovery of her mother's life and her first love.

As I expected, there are numerous descriptions of the places she visits. However, I felt that it was sometimes too much; too many adjectives in one sentence and, above all, the same places described several times. The advantage is that I have a precise image of Villa Serena, but I felt like the story was not really going anywhere, that everything was slow and that Beth did not really do much during the summer. It took me weeks to read it and unfortunately only the last third of the book really held my interest. The promise of a secret made me finish it: I wanted to know why Beth stopped going to Hungary, did not see her mother anymore and why everything changed. I must say that this twist in the plot was rather unexpected and Emylia Hall did not leave any clues which would enable the reader to guess the secret in the first chapters.

The setting is wonderful, but somehow artificial because we only get to know Beth through her summers in Hungary and we get to know people through her own eyes. It felt strange not to know much about her life in England, where she spends most of the time, and to have so many details about her yearly stay with her mother. In the same way, her relationships did not seem extremely realistic, probably because they were too stereotypical – a father with whom she cannot talk, an exotic and attractive mother, a wonderful boy she falls in love with at first sight and keeps loving through the years, although she only sees him a few weeks every year... I would have liked to know more about her feelings, because I do not have the impression that I got to know her at all, despite the three hundred pages I spent by her side.

While the beginning is slow, the end is rather quick. From the moment Beth discovers the secret that changes her life, everything moves on rapidly and we do not have time to think about her actions or the consequences of the decisions the characters made. The last pages are a little too romantic and unreal for my liking, but I enjoyed the fact that the author left it (rather) open and that everybody can have his own interpretation of what is going to happen.

Altogether, The Book of Summers did not live up to my expectations. I liked the general idea, the descriptions of Hungarian landscape, the way the story is built and the discovery of the secret, but the lack of balance disturbed me. I felt that everything was to descriptive while the story was not really going anywhere, that Beth's relationships to the other characters were artificial and that to understand her better and get to like her more, we would have needed to know more about her English life as well in order to compare it with her Hungarian summers. Nevertheless, it is Emylia Hall's first novel, a nice and easy summer read, and she will probably refine her style in her next publications.

Black Sea Twilight - Domnica Radulescu

Title: Black Sea Twilight
Author: Domnica Radulescu
Publisher: Doubleday
Release date: 2010
Pages: 330

 

* He had come to me in unrecognizable shape, a stranger, a man from the street, bearded and dressed like a vagabond, taking refuge inside an art gallery where I happened to be having my first show. But then he unfolded under my very eyes like some enchanted prince from fairy tales who casts off all evil spells and scaly skins upon the kiss of a woman. She recognizes him for what he it: the one next to whom life is a thrill and a carousel, an oasis and a walk through apricot blossoms even in the midst of a dry desert or a dizzying storm.*
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1980s Romania:
As the sun sets on the magical shore of the Black Sea and casts its last rays across the water, all Nora Teodoru can think about is pursuing her dream of becoming an accomplished artist - and of her love for Gigi, her childhood boyfriend from the Turkish part of town.
But story clouds are gathering as life under Dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu becomes increasingly unbearable. His secret police are circling, never far from the young couple's doors. Nora and Gigi make plans to escape to Turkey, but nothing can prepare them for the events that follow.
Five years later, the Romanian revolution is over, and Nora is on her own in Paris trying to make it as an artist. But then Gigi unexpectedly reappears in ther life - and they are faced with shocking revelations about each other.
Nora realizes that her life can never be the same...

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* I write a letter in my head to Anushka Pomorowska. I can't send it because it would be censored and Anushka would never get it anyway. But I indulge in this childish activity of writing an imaginary letter. At leats if she's not going to get it, it's because I never sent it, not because the police took it away. Living in this country stunts your maturity, and you want to stay in your childhood for ever, even when your childhood is also a mess.*

Set in the Romanian town of Mangalia a few years before the revolution, Black Sea Twilight is the story of young Nora Teodoru, her family, her dream of becoming an artist and her love for Gigi. However, life in a country regulated by a tyrannical leader and the secret police is not as simple and innocent as it may appear, and every single act can have far-reaching consequences on one’s life forever.

I was first attracted to that book when I caught the glimpse of its wonderful cover. It looked like a painting, with a mosque and the sea suggested in the background in different shades of green and in the foreground is a girl seen from behind. Then, the title, written in fine and shimmering font: Black Sea Twilight, something smooth, romantic and poetic.

As I read the synopsis featured on the back cover, I immediately thought it suited this picture. Moreover, the mosque suggested mix of cultures, something a particularly enjoy reading about. Once I greedily finished reading the last page, I have to admit that I was completely right. Black Sea Twilight is everything I had imagined, only better. It is a story about life in a difficult country, about art, about exile and different places in the world, and about love.

The first part takes place in Mangalia, a Romanian city situated by the Black Sea. There live different kind of people, from Romanians to Turks and Gypsies. Domnica Radulescu portrays a life full of colours and sensations as we get to know her characters better. Nora and Gigi develop slowly and so does their relationship. From the innocence of childhood, they will move to the realisation of the impact one’s act can have on their future under dictatorship.

Through a number of short episodes told on a more or less chronological order – with a few flashbacks and explanations about the past – we are given a portrait of these moving and charming characters as well as a representation of this unusual town with its blend of cultures. The story alternated between extremely representative descriptions full of images and feelings and little anecdotes which may seem irrelevant at first sight, but then make sense in the characters’ life as we discover what happens.

As Nora and Gigi come from a different environment, we are led through a mix of Turkish and Romanian traditions that we can easily compare. What is the same for everybody, though, is the threat of the State, the leader and the secret police. Freedom is a myth there, as the reader will soon discover while visiting Mangalia, Bucharest and other smaller places.

Nora’s story is the main focus of the story, but we also meet a number of other characters, each of them with their own personality, each of them special and moving in their own way: Valentin, Anushka, Agadira, Gigi’s parents, Nora’s relatives, Didona, Marița… It is the human presence that brings life and warmth in a restrained and unfree society. The grey landscape that could be the reflection of the political life is actually full of shapes and colours, echoing Nora’s desire to become a famous artist.

Thus, art is a central point of Black Sea Twilight: the painting, the drawing, but also Valentin’s music. The author’s writing style is perfectly adapted to the theme, as it is poetic and easy to read, with many details and beautifully arranged sentences. The reader is involved in the story as if he were witnessing Nora and Gigi’s flourishing love, their hopes, their fears, and their innocence.

The second part is darker, as if it were reflecting the dictatorship that is becoming more unbearable day after day. Tied by their live and friendship but, most important of all, by their hope for a brighter future, the characters decide to escape in order to obtain freedom and to find a better place for their dreams to be realised. However, this enterprise is extremely risky and they need strength, courage and luck to get through with it. This is when the tragedy happens and each of them has to pursue their own way and build their own future.

My only regret at that point of the book was the blurb, which I said gave away too much information. We know some of the events that will take place in the third part of the book and I felt it was a shame to spoil some of the suspense and expectation that could have been created otherwise. Yet, thinking about it, I do not know what should have been written in order to arouse the readers’ curiosity. It is true that Black Sea Twilight is an unusual story, focusing more on the characters’ psychology than on the action itself. There are no real turns or twists, yet the story is unexpected. There is not a climax everybody has been waiting for as tension built up over the pages, but a few acts that are decisive and life-changing and that occur smoothly, almost without our noticing it.

Nora and Gigi are ordinary people and anybody can identify themselves with them. However, given the political context, their story is different from anything most of us can imagine. It is something moving and difficult to imagine if you have not experienced such turbulent epochs. The author could use this opportunity to criticise the regime and spread propaganda, but she does not fall into the trap. By just describing ordinary people’s lives, she lets us decide and make up our own opinions on the subject.

The theme of exile is also examined during Nora’s journey to Turkey and then to France. These passages are extremely poignant and I was moved. It is only at the end of the story, when I read Domnica Radulescu’s short biography that I understood why her description are so vivid: she had experienced it; she was in the same situation as her main characters some years ago; she was a refugee.

I also understood the research she had carried out in order to write this wonderfully realistic and poetic book: about art, history, psychology. This amazing work shows through the background of her story, full of details and images. We constantly have references to famous artists from Romania and from the rest of the worlds, to musicians, to important historical events…

Mixed with the characters’ psychology and the vivid descriptions, Black Sea Twilight is a poignant story about self-discovery, the pursuit of one’s dreams and love. Domnica Radulescu found the right words to describe the Romanian revolution in both an attractive and simple way, through two young people’s eyes. The blend of cultures is showed through foreign words and sentences, namely in French, Turk and Romanian, but also through a great range of details and cultural references. Readers will enjoy the development of a nice love story, of a beautiful town by the sea, of exile and then a glimpse of Romania under Ceaușescu. More experiences readers will discover an incredible number of cultural and historical details. A wonderful novel raising questions about love and freedom.

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Thanks Mum for lending me this book

A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian - Marina Lewycka

Title: A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian
Author:Marina Lewycka
Publisher: Penguin Books
Release date: 2005
Pages: 324

 

* 'When we first came here, Vera, people could have said the same things about us - that we were ripping off the country, gorging ourselves on free orange juice, growing fat on NHS cod-liver oil. But they didn't. Everybody was kind to us.'*
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'Two years after my mother died, my father fell in love with a glamourous blonde Ukrainian divorcee. He was eighty-four and she was thirty-six. She exploded into our lives like a fluffy pink grenade, churning up the murky water, bringing to the surface a sludge of sloughed-off memories, giving the family ghosts a kick up the backside.'
Sisters Vera and Nadezhda must put aside a lifetime of feuding to save their émigré engineer father from voluptuous gold-digger Valentina. With her proclivity for green satin underwear and boil-in-bag cuisine, she will stop at nothing in the pursuit of Western wealth.
But the sisters' campaign to oust Valentina unearths family secrets, uncovers fifty years of Europe's darkest history and sends them back to roots they'd much rather forget...

You should never buy a book because of its title alone, but when I saw A short history of tractors in Ukrainian, I could not help it. The cover, in its old fashion style, attracted me, as well as all the reviews telling how hilarious it was. I was expecting a funny story, with lively characters and a farming Ukrainian background… and I must admit I am rather disappointed, as it is not exactly what I found in it.

When Valentina, an eccentric Ukrainian woman comes to the UK and marries Nadezhda’s father, she is forced to cooperate with her older sister Vera in order to protect him from his new wife’s greed. She nearly forty years younger than their father and they soon realise that she is abusing him, but by helping them, the two sisters must rethink their relationships and the family secrets.

Such a summary seemed very promising to me, but as I started the book, I did not enjoy it as much as I had expected. I found the story itself quite interesting, but I did not grow attached to the characters. It is told in the first person by Nadezhda, who explains to us what happens – and sometimes also what her father tells her on the phone. As she plays an active role in the plot, it is a rather good choice because she meets everybody the reader needs to know for the story. Yet, in my opinion, her character is not developed enough. We do not know much about her private life (apart from her relationship to her father, her sister and her past) or her relationship to her daughter and husband. It seemed to me that she lives in the past or in order to defend her father from Valentina, and that, apart from that, her personality was nearly inexistent. At the same time, I had the feeling that she was not the only narrator, as we sometimes have information about the characters opinions and thoughts she could not possibly know about.

The readers do not learn to know other characters that much either. Valentina is a caricature, which gives her little credibility although she is sometimes rather funny. Vera is even more transparent in her personality than her sister and their hate-to-love relationship seems surreal. Their father, however, is moving, with his eccentric Big Ideas and his innocent kindness.

If you have read my review so far, you are probably wondering about the title. To be honest, I was as well at the beginning of the book… and I am still a little at the end. Let me explain why: Nadezhda’s father is writing a book about the history of tractors, which were extremely important in Ukraine. So, as we read, we are given extracts of his historic writing, which I found extremely interesting (after all, I was a Young Farmer when I lived in the English countryside). The problem with these episodes is that they were not that easy to follow, given how many little events happen between each of them. Moreover, until the very end of the book, I found them interesting but irrelevant to the rest of the story. Luckily, the author gives a conclusion that lived up to my expectations.

In parallel with this story and the account of the present, we are given information about Ukrainian history – and more broadly, Europe history during the war – and the past of Nadezhda’s family. I found the historical passages interesting, although it was sometimes difficult to understand them as I did not have a very good background in history of communism, Russia and Eastern Europe. The fact that they alternated with the present and the tractors history did probably not help either. I enjoyed reading about the family’s past, especially when several points of view were given. I found them moving and I think it would have been worth giving more details about how life was in the 1930s in Ukraine.

What annoyed me was the writing style, which is probably supposed to add to the comic effect of the story. I think the author tried to illustrate the difficulties encountered by the characters because of the language barrier, for example by sometimes omitting the articles and using incorrect grammar. However, I found it exaggerated: I did not mind this strange syntax in the dialogues – on the contrary, I felt it lead us successfully in the characters’ world – but it hindered my reading in the narrative parts (especially when we have the feeling that the story is told by an external narrator). Even worse were the – many – comments in brackets telling us how the words were pronounced or adding information that was of little use.

A short history of tractors in Ukrainian was a good distraction for me, but I had expected more of this book. I liked the idea of the story and some passages were quite emotional or funny – unfortunately, there were not enough of them. There were also interesting comparisons between life in the East and in the West and considerations about society in our current world. I was surprised because I did not expect such serious issues in a comic book, but the vision given by Marina Lewycka captivated me. I think the organisation was not optimal, as three different parts are mixed together and it is sometimes difficult to remember and understand what happened before and why this precise event is told. I cannot say I hated it, I cannot say I loved it either. I am divided. If you are interested in Russian / Ukrainian history and tractors and that you like light reads, you will probably enjoy it. Keep in mind that if you are looking for an extremely funny story, you might be a little disappointed.

Bel Canto - Ann Patchett

Title: Bel Canto
Author: Ann Patchett
Publisher: HarperCollins Publisher
Release date: 2001
Pages: 318

 

*Maybe the private life wasn't forever. Maybe everyone got it for a little while and then spent the rest of their lives remembering.*
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Kidnappers storm an international gathering housed by a poor Latin American country to promote foreign trade. Unfortunately their intended target, the President, has stayed home to watch his favourite soap. The takeover settles into a siege, bringing together an unlikely assortment of hostages, including a beautiful American opera diva, a Japanese CEO who is her biggest fan, and his unassuming translator, Gen. Two couples, complete opposites, fall in love, and a horrific imprisonment is transformed into an unexpected heaven on earth.

Bel Canto is Ann Patchett's fourth novel and its ingenious plot is based on real events: the Lima crisis in 1996 during which the Japanese embassy was taken over. After the first chapter where the takeover is described, we expect a book full of suspense and political themes. What a surprise when we discover how the story actually goes on. The author focuses mainly on the characters, their feelings, how they react to being hostages, how they organise their lives together and their relationships. Instead of the thriller that such an event would naturally lead to, the reader discovers a subtle psychological novel that puts together comedy, romanticism, tragedy, and a little bit of suspense.

The siege gives the opportunity to the characters to evolve more rapidly than they would in the real word, first of all because nobody else is admitted in their small community and because they are forced to live together. The main characters are clearly Mr Hosokawa, a rich Japanese CEO, Gen, his translator, Roxane Coss, a famous opera singer, and Carmen, one of the terrorist, but they are supported by a wide range of people. Ann Patchett uses stereotypes, which brings humour to the novel and shows the differences of culture between the different countries represented by the guests.

As most of them are foreigners, communication is difficult. This is the reason why Gen has such an important part in the book: as a translator, he is polyglot and so everybody uses him to communicate. It is an ingenious strategy to subtly let the reader know about everybody's thoughts.

After a few chapers already, we notice that the situation has completely turned around: the hostages enjoy their captivity and want the situation to last forever and the terrorists cannot escape after their mission failed and start to enjoy the situation as well. As the story goes on, the rules fade away and routine settles into their lives. The relationships develop between the terrorists and hostages and some of the characters find love. Pure and intense love that they would probably not have found in the outside world.

Music is another important theme. As we have a famous opera singer in the house, everything is linked to music. The reader discovers a rich world of operas and songs of which the author demonstrates the importance in everybody's life.

The end happens quickly - maybe a little too quickly even - but with no real surprise, as we know from the beginning how it is going to end up. However, an epilogue gives us perspectives to think about and a quick overview of the main themes that have been dealt with in the book.

I recommend this novel to all readers interested in psychology of the characters and to those who want to see a political affair from a different angle. The plot is interesting, the characters well developped and Ann Patchett's style is extremely enjoyable to read.