Category: Book

Dietland

It was late in the spring when I noticed that a girl was following me, nearly the end of May, a month that means perhaps or might be.

Gods, I wish that this would be mandatory reading for male teenagers. Okay, any teenager. Why? Because it hits home with several hammers the fact of diet culture and how women are viewed in society. I know, but so many still don’t, and it’s best to get them as young as possible.

Is this is an activist story? Is showing reality activist? Protagonist Plum is fat, and have been working almost her entire year to not be it. She’s not living, she’s functioning until she can live as a skinny person, a normal person. Things are changed around when someone reaches out to her.

Simultaneously, violence acts against male rapists and abusers happens. People are confused, shocked, motivated, because whenever do men get what’s coming for them? Maybe a few trigger warnings are at place here: Sarai Walker doesn’t avoid descriptions of said acts.

The comedy tag is mostly for the laughing in disbelief you might do. Because yes, they’re right, and yes, it’s really this stupid. Or maybe you just have to laugh to prevent from getting angry for the entire time of reading it. You wouldn’t want to be considered unfuckable, after all.

Dietland, Sarai Walker, Houghton Mifflin Company 2015

Where the Crawdads Sing

Marsh is not swamp.

Subconsciously I picked out two books about protagonists who are –  by their surroundings – viewed as dangerously different. This one plays out in the (recent) past, but both Kya and Evan suffer from living in a small town.

Kya’s family is very, very poor, living in the marshes (or on the edge of it) and there’s not enough happiness around for anyone. Her family members leave her, and she falls back onto her familiar surroundings instead of the judgmental villagers.

This goes on for years, and might have gone on longer – Kya turning into something of a Tarzan, except with gulls and other birds – if a murder mystery wasn’t added to the equation. And what happens when disaster strikes? People look at the stranger.

This isn’t as greasy and damp as Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, but Owens does create a colourful, sometimes feverish world in which every human is a misfit – except for Kya. Yes, there could be more background about certain things, and the murder mystery is tied up not completely satisfying, but it’s a book with a feeling. And quite a few ornithology lessons.

Where the Crawdads Sing, Delia Owens, G.P. Putnam’s Sons 2018

The dangerous art of blending in

I should have guessed something was up when I was walking home.

Somehow I expected a softer story: the title, the subject (teenager doesn’t dare to come out), the surroundings (a small American town). But the author doesn’t hold his punches, like the mother of the protagonist doesn’t. I know that’s considered a spoiler, but I feel like that subject should come with a warning.

Evan’s life isn’t an easy one. His mother views him as lazy and evil, and his father almost never steps in when she gets aggressive. He doesn’t dare to come out to anyone, and all his energy goes to keeping all his different worlds (home, church, school, friends) apart.

Things change when his good friend starts to change, and when someone from Bible-camp shows up. Collision happens, and Evan can’t stop it.

The language used is clean and honest. Sometimes the tone feels a little bit too much like that from an after school program, but one has to remember that first of all these are a teenager’s feelings, and second of all, this is all too often someone’s reality. Besides that, you just want better. And possibly push his mother into the Grand Canyon.

The dangerous art of blending in, Angelo Surmelis, HarperCollins 2018

There There

There was an Indian head, the head of an Indian, the drawing of the head of a headdressed, long-haired Indian depicted, drawn by an unknown artist in 1939, broadcast until the late 1970s to American TVs everywhere after all the shows ran out.

Disclaimer: even more () than usual; I don’t want my ignorance about other’s people culture to show too badly.

I feel like I can share how I’m discerning a certain kind of mood, element in books written by different contemporary Native (north) American authors. It’s not just in the style they use (non-chronological without clear pointers of time, multiple character points of view), also the subject. Life as a native in North America doesn’t seem to be very good a lot of the time.

After doing a bit of research on this story, it turns out that the conscious stream of thoughts around the same things, connecting every character in passing, was on purpose. There’s a focus on oral tradition with (some) Native people and this book should feel like that. Which changes things a bit.

With that, you get not just a people’s history, but the huge amount of weariness, pain and discomfort that comes with it. Plenty of minorities stories are slowly shared and heard more often, but what about the people that were first on the North American continent? So yes, maybe there’s a recurring element, but maybe that’s because that’s just something essential that has to be shared before anything else can.

There There, Tommy Orange, Penguin Random House 2018

Het achtste leven (voor Brilka)

Eigenlijk heeft dit verhaal meer dan één begin.

Is het te vroeg in het jaar om te zeggen dat ik mijn beste boek van 2019 heb gelezen? Want oef, dit is een boek zoals je het wilt hebben, dat je het niet weg kunt leggen, dat het stukjes in jezelf raakt waarvan je niet eens af wist (of af wilt weten). Tegelijkertijd begrijp ik dat dit gigantisch persoonlijk is, hoe een boek je aanspreekt.

Dus raad ik dit boek aan voor de mensen die van familie ‘epics’ houden: verhalen die decennia overbruggen binnen één familie. Het boek is ook voor mensen die in geschiedenis geïnteresseerd zijn: een heel groot deel van het boek speelt zich af in twintigste-eeuws Sovjet plus Georgië (dat natuurlijk ook om de zoveel tijd onder de Sovjet viel).

En dan kan ik het ook nog aanraden omdat alle hoofdpersonen vrouwen zijn. Ja, niet de vriendelijkste, vrolijkste types, en ze maken ook dingen mee die je geen mens toewenst. Maar als je eenmaal begint, is het moeilijk stoppen. Het achtste leven is voor Brilka, al die anderen zijn voor de lezer.

Het achtste leven (voor Brilka), Nino Haratischwili, Atlas Contact 2017

Amal Unbound

I watched from the window as the boys tumbled out of the brick schoolhouse across the field from us.

This story sometimes feels a bit too much like those introductions to subjects in school books, but is enticing enough to not be bothered by that.

It’s a short story as well: I checked twice if I didn’t happen to download just the first book, or even an incomplete version (I’m so sorry library, it’s me that has the mistrust, not you that deserve it). In 166 pages Amal’s story is told.

She is a young teenager that lives in a small Pakistani village and dreams of becoming a teacher. Her entire life is turned upside down when she says no to a (blackmailing) landlord, moving her from future potential teacher to indentured servant.

This story is inspired by Malala Yousafzai, and as mentioned before, sometimes it shows. Through hardship this young girl learns things and acquires a new view of the world. For that second part (unless you come from a small Pakistani village as well), you should have a look at the novella.

Amal Unbound, Aisha Saeed, Penguin Books 2018

Doomsday Book

Mr. Dunworthy opened the door to the library and his spectacles promptly steamed up.

It might just be my age, but some books just feel like they were written a while ago (like up to twenty years while ago, not two-hundred years ago), and somehow they feel different. Maybe more about the story than about the production, or maybe it’s just the terrible covers. I’m done with this get-off-my-lawn-moment. I wasn’t wrong about Doomsday Book, though.

Because it was published in 1992, but plays in 2054 and the fourteenth century because yes, time travel! This was a recommendation related to time travel, and even though the place of recommendation is a bit dodgy sometimes, I’m so glad I read this. As mentioned before, it feels different, comfortable on a certain level. It was also just written in such a way that you have to keep on reading. There are hints scattered throughout, but you won’t know what went wrong to the historian sent back in time and getting ill while people in the present are getting sick as well!

The world-building creates accessible visuals (and again, that feeling of reading this during lunch break at high school), the characters know their place and the use of ‘special’ words is just enough to not get annoying.

There’s two more books in these series (of course it’s a series), but for now my time travel needs are satisfied. One warning: the visuals aren’t always attractive. As I said: sickness and illness.

Doomsday Book, Connie Willis, Bantam Books 1992