From the book jacket: "The dramatic and redemptive memoir of a woman whose curiosity led her to the world's most beautiful and remote places, its most interesting and perilous countries, and then into fifteen months of harrowing captivity - an exquisitely written story of courage, resilience, and grace"
This was a very powerful story, and I couldn't put it down. The last fifteen or so pages I was in tears most of the time, even as I marvelled at how she ever survived with her mind and heart intact. As intense as the brutality and abuse were, however, I was overwhelmed by how she could ever come to feel the compassion that she did, and how seemingly naturally she would reassert herself and find another path to her deep sense of self.
For example, and I quote from page 294: "On days when I was really sturggling, when I felt the pressure in my mind moving again toward a snapping point, a voice -( meaning her soul) posed questions. It said: In this exact moment, are you okay? The answer, in that exact moment, was steadying:Yes, right now I am still okay.
An amazing story, beautifully written, inspiring, and unforgettable.
Saturday, November 2, 2013
I Am A Hutterite by Mary Ann Kirkby ✔✔✔
Jean Bott loaned me this book after I saw it sitting on her coffee table when we were there for Study Group. We had a Hutterite colony close to us when we lived in Chauvin back in the 50s, and I somehow had the impression theirs was a very repressive society, so I was interested in learning more about them. I guess we fear - or at least mistrust- those we don't know, because we always regarded them with some suspicion. I know my Mom thought they had stolen my pjs from our clothesline once!
What a pleasant surprise it was to read about these people - everything is held in common, although families have their own homes. All meals are taken together in a large hall and the women take a week about cooking, baking, etc. They are taught by a teacher from "the outside", and there are amusing stories by the author about how they regarded her clothing, and spent Saturdays trying on her shoes in the teacher's room behind their classroom. The men drive trucks, and they do leave the colony to shop ( I remember seeing them in Chauvin - not the women though, who wear black and white polka dots head scarves. But the overall impression is one of happiness and contentment, good food, good company, living in a long-ago type atmosphere.
There were strict rules, however, the strictest one being that a man had to promise on his wedding day that he would never force his family to leave the colony, and of course, this is what happened to Mary Ann's family after her father and his brother-in-law, the head minister/mayor/rule enforcer constantly disagreed until such time as here Dad and Mother could not continue living there.
Their life after leaving the colony was very hard - isolated from everything they knew, living in extreme poverty, and suffering bullying and discrimination from their school mates. Things eventually got better, relatively speaking, and they were able occasionally to return to the colony and visit with friends.
I didn't expect this book to be as interesting as it was, and also well-written.
What a pleasant surprise it was to read about these people - everything is held in common, although families have their own homes. All meals are taken together in a large hall and the women take a week about cooking, baking, etc. They are taught by a teacher from "the outside", and there are amusing stories by the author about how they regarded her clothing, and spent Saturdays trying on her shoes in the teacher's room behind their classroom. The men drive trucks, and they do leave the colony to shop ( I remember seeing them in Chauvin - not the women though, who wear black and white polka dots head scarves. But the overall impression is one of happiness and contentment, good food, good company, living in a long-ago type atmosphere.
There were strict rules, however, the strictest one being that a man had to promise on his wedding day that he would never force his family to leave the colony, and of course, this is what happened to Mary Ann's family after her father and his brother-in-law, the head minister/mayor/rule enforcer constantly disagreed until such time as here Dad and Mother could not continue living there.
Their life after leaving the colony was very hard - isolated from everything they knew, living in extreme poverty, and suffering bullying and discrimination from their school mates. Things eventually got better, relatively speaking, and they were able occasionally to return to the colony and visit with friends.
I didn't expect this book to be as interesting as it was, and also well-written.
Wednesday, October 16, 2013
419 by Will Ferguson ✔✔✔
This novel won the Giller prize last fall, so late last spring I downloaded it and had begun reading it when it was selected for our Book Club this year, so I put it aside till this fall to finish.
I had some trouble reading it. The beginning - with Laura's father found dead by apparent suicide and the discovery that he'd gotten into a scam from Nigeria- was interesting enough. Then all of a sudden there's a mysterious woman travelling across Nigeria, hiding a lot of the time, begging enough food to feed herself and her unborn child. We never do find out why she was wandering, except that her face was scarred, so maybe she'd been attacked back home. Nor does she appear to know where she's wandering to until she meets Nnamdi, another character who is just inserted into the novel, who seems to be there just to show us how the discovery of oil and the takeover by the multi-national companies has affected the poor. There are occasional interjections back to Laura, but nothing substantial enough to give us any idea why- or how- these characters will finally intersect.
They finally do, but I was so uninterested in Nnamdi's story, simply because the novel seemed to shift so suddenly to him away from Laura and the wandering woman. His story is actually the longest in the entire novel. Anyway, I skimmed my way through all this - and got myself a major headache for doing it- but I decided I should read the final part of the novel more closely, so I read the last 1/3 of it, and found it interesting - even though I still don't know why Amina was wandering! Now, in preparation for Book Club I'm reading Nnamdi's story, so I've actually read the complete novel, only not in order. Laura, who seems at the beginning to be this mousy little copy-editor, becomes Wonder Woman when she gets to Nigeria, chasing down the bad guys and putting herself in danger - I figured at this point that these characters were just driving the story and the author's message. I really do get a bit disgusted when the author has no respect for the reader, and I think that's what happened here.
I really don't think the novel is all that well-written. It probably didn't help that I was re-reading some Alice Munro stories at the same time in honour of her being awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, and I mean really - no one compares to her.
What attracted me to the novel was the 419 schemes, because we've all received these e-mails, and it was interesting to find out what could possibly happen when you respond to them. But it was just too choppy and disconnected for me. Should be an interesting discussion on Saturday, because I'm sure there'll be people who just loved it!
And you can be sure I'll be expressing my opinions!
I had some trouble reading it. The beginning - with Laura's father found dead by apparent suicide and the discovery that he'd gotten into a scam from Nigeria- was interesting enough. Then all of a sudden there's a mysterious woman travelling across Nigeria, hiding a lot of the time, begging enough food to feed herself and her unborn child. We never do find out why she was wandering, except that her face was scarred, so maybe she'd been attacked back home. Nor does she appear to know where she's wandering to until she meets Nnamdi, another character who is just inserted into the novel, who seems to be there just to show us how the discovery of oil and the takeover by the multi-national companies has affected the poor. There are occasional interjections back to Laura, but nothing substantial enough to give us any idea why- or how- these characters will finally intersect.
They finally do, but I was so uninterested in Nnamdi's story, simply because the novel seemed to shift so suddenly to him away from Laura and the wandering woman. His story is actually the longest in the entire novel. Anyway, I skimmed my way through all this - and got myself a major headache for doing it- but I decided I should read the final part of the novel more closely, so I read the last 1/3 of it, and found it interesting - even though I still don't know why Amina was wandering! Now, in preparation for Book Club I'm reading Nnamdi's story, so I've actually read the complete novel, only not in order. Laura, who seems at the beginning to be this mousy little copy-editor, becomes Wonder Woman when she gets to Nigeria, chasing down the bad guys and putting herself in danger - I figured at this point that these characters were just driving the story and the author's message. I really do get a bit disgusted when the author has no respect for the reader, and I think that's what happened here.
I really don't think the novel is all that well-written. It probably didn't help that I was re-reading some Alice Munro stories at the same time in honour of her being awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, and I mean really - no one compares to her.
What attracted me to the novel was the 419 schemes, because we've all received these e-mails, and it was interesting to find out what could possibly happen when you respond to them. But it was just too choppy and disconnected for me. Should be an interesting discussion on Saturday, because I'm sure there'll be people who just loved it!
And you can be sure I'll be expressing my opinions!
The Massey Murder by Charlotte Gray ✔✔✔✔
I'm a real fan of Gray's books - she writes what I guess could be called narrative histories, since the stories are true, but she writes them so well they read like a novel. She also is able to meld her research with a narrative touch so everything holds together well.
This book is about a young housemaid in Toronto in 1914 who shoots and kills her employer as he returns home from his work day. The subtitle of the book : A Maid, Her Master and the Trial That Shocked a Country pretty well tells it all- Carrie Davies is the 18-year-old maid who has recently come from England to better herself and help her family financially back home, John Massey is the master whose wife is away visiting family in the US when he decides to make moves on Carrie, and the trial is shocking because of the differing levels of society that are represented here, as well as the lawyers, judge, etc and their presentation of this case, plus the ramifications for the jury's final verdict.
Gray also fits all of this into the framework of a country at war, a newspaper war, emerging rights for women and a fast growing Toronto. I found it fascinating.
This book is about a young housemaid in Toronto in 1914 who shoots and kills her employer as he returns home from his work day. The subtitle of the book : A Maid, Her Master and the Trial That Shocked a Country pretty well tells it all- Carrie Davies is the 18-year-old maid who has recently come from England to better herself and help her family financially back home, John Massey is the master whose wife is away visiting family in the US when he decides to make moves on Carrie, and the trial is shocking because of the differing levels of society that are represented here, as well as the lawyers, judge, etc and their presentation of this case, plus the ramifications for the jury's final verdict.
Gray also fits all of this into the framework of a country at war, a newspaper war, emerging rights for women and a fast growing Toronto. I found it fascinating.
Saturday, September 28, 2013
Nocturne: On the Life and Death of My Brother - Helen Humphreys ✔✔✔
Humphreys is a favorite Canadian author of mine - I loved The Lost Garden especially. This was a very different book, since it is a letter to her brother Martin, a well-known Canadian pianist, RCM examiner, composer who was diagnosed with terminal cancer in the summer of 2009 and who died in December of the same year at the age of 45.
There are some wonderful quotes I could copy here , on the themes of grief, dying, sibling love, but most especially about music. Interestingly enough, one of Martin's favorite pieces was Debussy's Clair de Lune, which is also my "signature piece", and she even quotes the Paul Verlaine poem which was the basis for all of Suite Bergamasque. But anyway, here are a few...
"Grief enjoys shorthand, that's what I'm thinking today. Narrative is too fluid. Grief is all chop, all rhythm and breaks, broken. It is the lurch of the heart, not the steady beating of it."
"Maybe music is better company than writing because it makes a sound, takes up human space, a dimension in the world. It releases emotion, whereas writing pins emotion down. And all writing is necessarily elegaic."
"You must have felt both liberated and oppressed by the fact that the music lived through you, that you were responsible for making it happen, that without your body to animate it there was only silence"
There are some wonderful quotes I could copy here , on the themes of grief, dying, sibling love, but most especially about music. Interestingly enough, one of Martin's favorite pieces was Debussy's Clair de Lune, which is also my "signature piece", and she even quotes the Paul Verlaine poem which was the basis for all of Suite Bergamasque. But anyway, here are a few...
"Grief enjoys shorthand, that's what I'm thinking today. Narrative is too fluid. Grief is all chop, all rhythm and breaks, broken. It is the lurch of the heart, not the steady beating of it."
"Maybe music is better company than writing because it makes a sound, takes up human space, a dimension in the world. It releases emotion, whereas writing pins emotion down. And all writing is necessarily elegaic."
"You must have felt both liberated and oppressed by the fact that the music lived through you, that you were responsible for making it happen, that without your body to animate it there was only silence"
Saturday, September 21, 2013
The Orenda by Joseph Boyden ✔✔✔✔✔
I could give this book more checkmarks, I would - it's a wonderful book! The third by Boyden, and although I thoroughly enjoyed them all, this was very special.
The Orenda is the story of the Huron Indians, the Jesuit priests who came to convert them in the early seventeenth century, and the Iroquois Indians, who were bitter enemies of both the Hurons and the Jesuits. Bird is a Huron elder whose wife and family were killed by the Iroqouis many years earlier, and is the central Huron character in the story. He captures and kills an Iroquois family, but saves their young daughter, and adopts her as his own, naming her Snow Falls. And finally there is Christophe, the Jesuit priest referred to by the Hurons as Crow, because he wears a flapping black robe. He has come to the Hurons, escorted by Bird when this killing takes place, and is later joined by other Jesuits. Christophe's character is based on Jean de Brebeuf, the Jesuit martyr.
This isn't an easy book to read, because it is very brutal, both in the violence throughout, but also in the weather conditions, the illnesses, lack of proper food. However, Boyden paints a clear picture of a way of life we can only wonder at, and describes many native rituals, including torture, in such a way that you could never say the violence was gratuitous. And I couldn't put it down, and found myself thinking about it when I wasn't reading it. The rituals ands religious symbols of the Jesuits were a complete mystery to the natives, and to have these described from the native's vantage point is masterful.
It's been nominated for the Giller, which Boyden won for Through Black Spruce a few years ago, so it'll be interesting to see if he's able to repeat. And - as usual after I read a good historical novel like this one - I spent another half hour or so looking up information about the various tribes and the role of the Jesuits in these communities.
This may be a good book to recommend for Book Club another year.
The Orenda is the story of the Huron Indians, the Jesuit priests who came to convert them in the early seventeenth century, and the Iroquois Indians, who were bitter enemies of both the Hurons and the Jesuits. Bird is a Huron elder whose wife and family were killed by the Iroqouis many years earlier, and is the central Huron character in the story. He captures and kills an Iroquois family, but saves their young daughter, and adopts her as his own, naming her Snow Falls. And finally there is Christophe, the Jesuit priest referred to by the Hurons as Crow, because he wears a flapping black robe. He has come to the Hurons, escorted by Bird when this killing takes place, and is later joined by other Jesuits. Christophe's character is based on Jean de Brebeuf, the Jesuit martyr.
This isn't an easy book to read, because it is very brutal, both in the violence throughout, but also in the weather conditions, the illnesses, lack of proper food. However, Boyden paints a clear picture of a way of life we can only wonder at, and describes many native rituals, including torture, in such a way that you could never say the violence was gratuitous. And I couldn't put it down, and found myself thinking about it when I wasn't reading it. The rituals ands religious symbols of the Jesuits were a complete mystery to the natives, and to have these described from the native's vantage point is masterful.
It's been nominated for the Giller, which Boyden won for Through Black Spruce a few years ago, so it'll be interesting to see if he's able to repeat. And - as usual after I read a good historical novel like this one - I spent another half hour or so looking up information about the various tribes and the role of the Jesuits in these communities.
This may be a good book to recommend for Book Club another year.
Wednesday, September 4, 2013
Stranglehold by Robert Rotenberg ✔✔✔✔✔
This is the fourth crime novel written by Rotenberg, a criminal lawyer himself from Toronto. I have read them all, and this one is my favorite so far. Nearly all of the characters are familiar, because they appear in the three previous novels, although the stories are not sequential.
Detective Ari Greene is accused of murder in this particular one, and the victim is another well-known character from the previous novels.
Fast-paced, many references to familiar spots in Toronto ( this one centers on a motel on Kingston Road, a very familiar street for us when travelling to David's place), and informative glimpses into the police department and courtroom drama, these are very exciting reads from beginning to end.
I can't say enough about the quality of these novels. I read this one in three days - couldn't put it down!
Detective Ari Greene is accused of murder in this particular one, and the victim is another well-known character from the previous novels.
Fast-paced, many references to familiar spots in Toronto ( this one centers on a motel on Kingston Road, a very familiar street for us when travelling to David's place), and informative glimpses into the police department and courtroom drama, these are very exciting reads from beginning to end.
I can't say enough about the quality of these novels. I read this one in three days - couldn't put it down!
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