The Amazon Kindle

Amazon has released a handheld electronic book reader. It has free wireless access for downloading books and some limited ability to write and send email.

AWFUL AWFUL AWFUL

Now, I admit that I have not tried this or any electronic book reader. Perhaps my snap judgement is part of why I'm not a well-known book-industry pundit. BUT, I could NEVER give up reading real books. I love paging through a book, I love hating the books that have pages with slightly different-sized pages. I am a dog-earer. I also love the weight of a pile of books as I walk home from the library. In fact, one of the best moments of my week (or month) is getting into bed with five new books from the library and re-reading their jackets to decide which one to read first.

To add insult to injury, Amazon is now SOLD OUT of this product and Michael Lewis (whom I idolize) has endorsed it as a great product. Traitor!

My Aunt Ellen pointed out that I read the newspaper online, something she would never do. Good point. Now I know how she feels.

Follett's back

Jo called me to tell me that Ken Follett released a sequel to one of my all-time favorite books, Pillars of the Earth. The new book is called World Without End, and takes place 300 years after the original. (Pillars is about several generations of people in the 12th century building a massive cathedral in England. My high school guidance counselor suggested it to me when I was freaking out about whether to study English or Math.)

Now the only question is whether to reread Pillars first. It's a 1000 page commitment, but might enhance my experience of World. I guess the other question is who took my original copy, forcing me to buy a replacement with a different cover.

Rollback by Robert J. Sawyer

This is the first book in a long time that I stayed up late (too late!) to finish. This is hard-core science fiction, a la Asimov, but absolutely readable and totally delightful.

It is the story of a married couple in their eighties, and it begins in the year 2048. The wife, Sarah, is a famous scientist who decoded an alien communique thirty years earlier. When the aliens contact Earth again, Sarah is asked to work on the new message. Sarah is offered a "rollback", a chance to return to being in her twenties, physically, so she can work on the decryption. She accepts, with the caveat that her husband Don gets the rollback as well. It works for him, but not for her. And that's all in the first few pages.

The book alternates between the time period that begins in 2048 with the second message from the aliens, and the time period that began in 2009, when the first message was received. It's funny to be in the 2048 world with all its technology and see 2009 as the quaintly simple time. The story also shares third-person narration between Sarah's point of view and Don's. Sarah struggles with decoding and aging; Don struggles with not aging and conceiving of another sixty years of life he didn't expect.

I liked this book because I liked the plot and the characters. The story of Earth's communication with a distant galaxy, including the message with which the galaxy replies, is creative and unique. Sarah, her husband, and the other ancillary characters are likable with realistically familiar hopes and fears. That is what I love about good science-fiction writing: once you suspend your disbelief, there are complex characters in interesting circumstances with a good dose of social commentary thrown in.

The social critiques in this book were not severe. The rollback obviously critiqued our society's adoration for everything youthful, physically. There wasn't that much negative discussion of technology replacing humans or replacing interpersonal interactions. There was even a friendly heroic robot. This book did offer a theme of universal values across not just people, but galaxies. The aliens, who we never meet (well, not exactly), still develop strongly as characters with valid desires. In that way, it reminded me of how Star Trek can suddenly make you think about the universal nature of existence.

Perhaps my favorite line from the book, in all its campyness, is spoken by Sarah: "The Aliens from Sigma Draconis have responded to the radio message my team sent all those years ago." It was such a throwback to a 1950's sci-fi movie that I had to chuckle at how out of place it seemed in an otherwise well-written, serious book.

Broken Paradise by Cecelia Samartin

I was out of borrowed books and vacation books and I-need-a-treat books so I cruised the library's newest acquisitions. This is the first of five new books I took out. Given my affinity towards books set in foreign places, as well as my affinity towards Latin American topics, it was surprising to me that this is first book I can remember reading that is set in Cuba.

The book follows the lives of two best friend-cousins, Nora and Alicia. Growing up, Nora is quiet and compliant, while Alicia is beautiful and wild. During the Batista reign in Cuba, the girls live a charmed, upper-middle class life. However, when Castro comes to power, Alicia's father is accused of being anti-Communist, just one of the many things that convince Nora's parents to emigrate to the United States. Nora adjusts (with a few hiccups) into life as a Cuban-American. Through her correspondence with Alicia over the years, we can see how different her life would have been if she hadn't left.

I was really struck by how bad things got in Cuba and how quickly they got bad. I suppose I had always throught of Cuba as run by Castro, who we are not supposed to like, but otherwise sunny and full of good cigars. This book really taught me a lot more about the history and about how poor the living conditions became when he took power through current times. Some of the descriptions of people waiting it out and in denial when he first took over, as well as the seemingly random violence towards citizens reminded me of Hitler's rise to power. The book also opened my eyes to Cuban-American sentiment about returning to Cuba with Castro in power; many Cubans don't see it as their country as long as he is in power.

The writing in the book was not as good as the story or the descriptions of Cubans. It switched haphazardly between a poetic and a matter-of-fact style, sometimes within the same chapter. It also was structurally confusing in a few places when significant amounts of time had elapsed without the reader knowing.

Overall, I enjoyed the process of learning more about pre-Castro Cuba, Communist Cuba, and Cuban-American attitudes towards Cuba. The friendship between the girls was touching and I did want to know how the book would end (although I had a hunch that was right). However, I was not sold on the book as a whole because the writing just wasn't good enough to support the contents.

The Dissident by Nell Freudenberger

I found this book on an old booklist of mine, so I'm not sure who recommended it to me. The ending of this book came out of nowhere and I really disliked it, so overall I'd say that I didn't like the book. However, there were aspects of the experience of reading the book that I did enjoy. I just wouldn't recommend it.

The book is about a Chinese artist named Yuan Zhao who comes to the United States for a year-long experience. He is sponsored by a local university who expects him to exhibit his work in two shows during the year. Zhao lives in Los Angeles with an American family, the Travers, and teaches art at an all-girls high school.

Freudenberger could have written a book exclusively about the Travers and the high school, which the mother teaches in and the daughter attends. There were complicated relationships within the family, as well as between family members and other characters. The situations these characters faced, and their decisions, were compelling and well-crafted.

However, the book also covers Zhao and his life, both currently in Los Angeles and in a burgeoning artists' community in China in the early 1980's. Zhao's difficulty in adjusting to his role as a guest at the Travers' and a teacher is palpable. The descriptions of the artists' colony he becomes a part of in China are clear and evocative. It was a window into a time and place I had never seen or even thought about.

Where the author veers off course a little is in her insistence on having her characters grapple with existential questions like "what is art" along all the other things going on in the book. I think she is trying to make some statements about art but I don't know what they are. A struggle with identity is one thing to cover in a novel like this; comments around performance art are better suited for an editorial in a weird magazine that I don't read.

However, I would have forgiven her the detours into art critique because I liked the characters (or at least how well-developed they were) and enjoyed learning about art in Communist China. The ending of the book, though, superseded its appeal. Most of the characters' resolutions were satisfying but Zhao's was neither satisfying nor what it should have been: a confirmation of the themes throughout the book.

ps: I just learned that this blog has at least one loyal fan, and she shares a first name with the author of this book. Hello and thanks for reading!

Intuition by Allegra Goodman

Mer A. cornered me in a bookstore and told me I HAD to buy this book. Knowing that she and I don't always agree but feeling like treating myself to a book, I bought it. It was okay, not great, but held my interest well enough. I'd try something else by this author but I wouldn't necessarily recommend this particular book.

The story is interesting enough; a researcher at an institute in Cambridge makes a shockingly good discovery in a cancer-related rat experiment. The results become public, then publicly challenged. As the events unfold, there are life-changing consequences for him, his ex-girlfriend, and the two people who run the lab, one of whom is highly political the other of whom is a true scientist.

The best part of this book was not the story, although the plot was good. The best part of the book was undoubtedly the characters and character development. Close to ten characters were incredibly well-developed, their motives and fears believable and mistakes forgivable. It was almost the inevitability of the plot that made the characters shine. Since what was going to happen with the investigation was reasonably predictable, what became interesting about the book was how the characters reacted and more so what they were thinking and feeling.

The writing was not great. (In fact, I haven't read much lately that has had great writing although I've liked the plots of a lot of books lately.) There were, however, a few passages that were noteworthy. Goodman's ability to capture her characters' essence with small, efficient notes was the main reason I would try another book by her.

Of Cliff, the main researcher, she writes, "Gently he put the book down and threw away the cardboard wrapping. Wilde's tale of the beautiful young Dorian and his dissembling might have been the last stake through Cliff's heart, except that, fortunately, he was unfamiliar with the novel."

Of Robin, his ex-girlfriend, she writes, "Clutching her black pen tightly, she bent over her journal and wrote, He actually asked if I would stay and keep him company tonight to watch him work. Then when I said no, he was surprised. She might have written more. She could have ranted on, but for Robin that was a rant. She'd wrung those few sentences from her heart, and grieved every word."

I loved how you could learn so much about the characters from such short passages.

Labyrinth by Kate Mosse

This was a fun and easy book, set in France and thus perfect vacation reading this summer. The Kirkus Review said it was "of higher literary quality than the Da Vinci Code, to which it will inevitably be compared." I didn't find the writing much better than that of DVC, although I did think the story was incredibly well-researched and well-crafted. Web was surprised that I picked it up to begin with, claiming it seemed to be more his speed than mine, but I think my tastes are widening a bit.

The story follows Alice, who is on an archaeological expedition in France and finds something unusual there. For reasons she does not understand, she is drawn to ignore the protocol of working with a partner and alerting the people who are running the dig to her findings. This item ends up putting her in danger , and we follow her through France as she tries to solve the mystery associated with this item and subsequently regain her safety.

Several hundred years earlier, we meet Alais, also a strong woman who lives by her own rules in an otherwise male-dominated world. Alice's modern day discovery is a result of Alais' membership in a secretive society, the continuation of which is still being sought by other characters in the book, some good and some evil.

While I did not find the writing exceptional, I did enjoy both stories. That is unusual; usually there is one time that holds my attention more than the other. The scenes in the past were well-described and evoked a very clear picture of the times. There were some exceptionally sad scenes that have stayed with me that occurred when Alais' town was attacked during the Crusades. Both Alice and Alais were strong, well-developed characters. As the book unfolded, and the connections between the time periods became clearer, I was anxious to know what was the resolution would be.

The Invisible Circus by Jennifer Egan

I needed a few Europe-themed books for my vacation to France this year so when Mom suggested that I'd like this one I went to Barnes and Noble with it on the top of my list. Jennifer Egan's Look At Me was great, so I had high expectations for this. Unfortunately, B&N only had a paperback version of this that actors from the movie adaptation on the front, but I bought it anyway.

Phoebe, the protagonist, is the youngest of three children, the eldest of which was her now-deceased sister, Faith. Faith went to Europe as a hippie teenager, and died under mysterious circumstances there. We meet Phoebe as she is a frustrated high school student. "At her vast public high school Phoebe had felt reduced to a pidgin version of herself, as during "conversations" in French class--Where is the cat? Have you seen the cat? Look! Pierre gives the cat a bath--such was her level of fluency while discussing bongs or bands or how fucked up something was at a party." Her life stagnating (and her relationship with her mother strained), she takes off to Europe seeking more information about Faith's death.

As the book progresses, and Phoebe makes her way through Western Europe, we learn more about her family history. The relationship between Faith and her father emerges as incredibly unhealthy, her father relying on her sister for strength: "Maybe nothing of hers could compete with their father's need of her, her [sister's] unique and seemingly bottomless power to save him." Faith becomes less elegant and more flawed as Phoebe follows her sister's route through Europe.

This book is very well written, which makes up for the occasional inevitability of the plot. Egan's ability to capture certain moments between characters was shockingly good, particularly for a first novel. Had I not already read other books by her, I'd worry that she exhausted all her beautiful prose in one place. The following scene occurs between Faith's former boyfriend and his new girlfriend: "Carla exclaimed at something she'd found, set down her cigarette and circled the time with a stubby pencil, her other hand groping for Wolf as if for a pair of glasses or a cigarette pack finding his wrist without lifting her eyes from the paper. The gesture transfixed Phoebe--the inadvertence of it, the thoughtlessness."

What I also liked about the book was that it was both a coming of age story as well as a journey story. At the beginning of the book, Phoebe is young; in many ways, she is frozen in time from when her sister died. As she moves through her trip she grows up and is clearly a young woman by the time she returns home. She falls in love for the first time and expresses several universal feelings about it: "Seeing Wolf clothed, out in the world, Phoebe, often was shocked at how unmarked he was physically by all that had happened between them. Their flesh seemed ready at times to fall apart limb from lib, yet here they both were, intact. Somewhat creaky, lips faintly bruised, but unmarked in any permanent sense. If they went their separate way, there would be no proof. This troubled Phoebe."

This was a great work of female fiction. Thanks, Mom.

Galapagos by Kurt Vonnegut

One of the reasons I went to Brown for college was so I didn't have to take a set of required courses. Like, say, um, Biology. But every year, I remember seeing legions of freshman dutifully taking introductory biology and the first course assignment was to read Vonnegut's Galapagos. And every year, I remember thinking, "well gosh, I like books, maybe I'd like Vonnegut, maybe I'd LIKE biology." But I never tried it. So this year, when August rolled around, I decided to symbolically start a school year by reading Galapagos.

Awesome. This book was absolutely awesome. It made me want to read more Vonnegut and go to the Galapagos. Maybe go to the Galapagos and read Vonnegut. Anyway, I'm clearly on a sci-fi kick and this fit right in. A great story, cleverly told, with plenty of commentary on evolution and ethics.

At its simplest, it's about the story of several people on a cruise through the Galapagos Islands (home to many interesting species - particularly evolutionarily). Of course, there is a world-wide armageddon that begins when the cruise begins, and it's narrated several millenia in the future, but hey, it's Vonnegut.

The book is equal parts science and poetry. The science deals a lot with genetics and evolution. Writing about dental care, the narrator (millenia in the future) remarks, "It would be nice to say that the Law of Natural Selection, which has done people so many favors in such a short time, had taken care of the tooth problem, too. In a way it has, but its solution has been draconian. It hasn't made teeth more durable. It has simply cut the average human life span down to about thirty years."

Vonnegut wrote the story using many techniques that ensured the reader could not focus on the plot. He often interrupts his own descriptions or stories to tell you ahead of time what the resolution of a particular situation will be. It puts the reader in a position of analysis, like the narrator who knows the ending, rather than one of following plot. For example, he writes, "He was unmarried and had never reproduced, and so was insignificant from an evolutionary point of view. He might also have been considered as a marriage possibility for Mary Hepburn. But he, too, was doomed. *Siegfriend von Kleist would survive the sunset, but three hours after that he would be drowned by a tidal wave."

As someone who doesn't read the New York Times Book Review because of how much plot they give away in their reviews, I was incredibly frustrated by this aspect of the book. But it also challenged me to understand what was going on through different eyes, which is not something just any author can accomplish. Another example: "It just might have been fatal that the colonists killed off all the land iguanas almost immediately--but it turned out not to have been a disaster. It could have mattered a lot. It just happened that it didn't matter much at all." The narrator says this, hundreds of thousands of years later, and the reader is forced to understand that the action in this story is reasonably insignificant and that plot is not the narrator's point.

Like all good science fiction, Vonnegut is ultimately making a socio-political point. This one, I believe not just about technology and environmental damage (although he is commenting on that, albeit deterministically), but about people's treatment of each other.

"It pains me now," his narrator writes, "even a million years later, to write about such human misbehavior. A million years later, I feel like apologizing for the human race. That's all I can say."

If you like Vonnegut, or science fiction, or evolution, or even a challenge, this is a great book. If you're more comfortable in the Oprah range (don't be ashamed), then skip this one.

Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood

I was looking for something reliable at the library, and decided on an Atwood book. I think I was in the mood for a women's friendship book and instead I ended up with a dystopia sci-fi book, but it was a good one. I was definitely reminded of how good a sci-fi writer Atwood is, this book pushing her capabilities further than even Handmaid's Tale.

This book takes place in an alternative future, alternating between two times. The first is when the world as we know it reached its peak of scientific "progress". This time is best captured here, in a discussion of a major company's business model:

"There were pigoons at NooSkins, just as at OrganInc Farms, but these were smaller and were being used to develop skin-related biotechnologies. The main idea was the find a method of replacing the older epidermis with a fresh one, not a laser-thinned or dermabraded short-term resurfacing but a genuine start-over skin that would be wrinkle- and blemish-free."

The second time frame in the story takes place after this world has imploded due to too much technology being misused. The new world can only be described as post-apocolyptic, reminding me of a wasteland I don't remember since seventh grade's Canticle for Liebowitz.

"Along the road is a trail of objects people must have dropped in flight, like a treasure hunt in reverse. A suitcases, a knapsack spilling out clothes and trinkets; an overnight bag, broken open, beside it a forlorn pink toothbrush. A bracelet; a woman's hair ornament in the shape of a butterfly; a notebook, its pages soaked, the handwriting illegible. The fugitives must have had hope, to begin with. They must have thought th'd have a use for these things later. Then they'd changed their minds and let go."

The narrator is named Snowman (formerly known as Jimmy in the old world), and he was best friends with Crake and in love with Oryx, the title characters. Now Snowman seems to be the only human left on earth, kept alive by specially bred species who used to be science experiments. Growing up, he worshipped Crake as an older brother-style role model. His life starts to fall apart while Crake becomes the darling of a multinational conglomerate. As the story unfolds we learn more about Crake's motives and drive, and more about Jimmy's path to becoming Snowman.

I liked reading this book and thought it had a more satisfying ending than Atwood's books usually have. However, it's not for the weak of heart. It's hard-core sci-fi and takes some patience to learn all the language and ocnstructs relating to this new world.

Timeline by Ken Follett

I was unexpectedly home in New Jersey and ran out of books, so I ransacked Jo's bookshelf. She has always liked Michael Crichton so I was in luck. I ended up lugging it back to Boston, hardcover and all. Part science fiction, part historical fiction, 100% action.

This was a fun book. It's about a high-tech company in the near future who figures out a way to time travel. Their corporate goals intersect those of a group of academics who are excavating a 14th century village, the Dordogne in France. The academics end up getting sent back to 14th century France, and that's where things get interesting.

I had forgotten how good Michael Crichton is! There were no particular passages in the book that I thought were exceptionally well-written, but I could not put the book down. Reminiscent of Ken Follett's Pillars of the Earth, this book demonstrated an author's comprehensive and extensive understanding of a reasonably obscure topic (in this case both particle physics and French history) brought into a great story.

The preface, written with the book in 1999, made me chuckle. Crichton writes of the futuristic setting for the book: "It is a world of exploding advances on the frontiers of technology. Information moves instantly between two points, without wires or networks. Computers are built from single molecules. " Check, check.

Definitely a good read, specifically for you science types out there.

Jesusland by Julia Scheeres

This is yet another one from Mer A's pile. This is a very sad book. Scheeres' memoir depicts a childhood both unusual and terrible.

Scheeres grows up in rural Indiana in a strictly Calvinist home. Her parents adopt two black children because circumstances make it seem that it is the "Christian" thing to do. However, their town is completely white and the boys' seemingly lucky addition into Scheeres' family ends up being nightmarish for them. The first half of the book focuses on this early childhood, from elementary school through early adolescence. Her upbringing is shameful and strange: her (doctor) father drives a Porsche, but the family eats table scraps for dinner; her mother pipes Christian pop music into the entire house through the intercom system; her black adopted brothers are beaten and live in the basement but she is not and does not.

Her writing ranges from good to superb. She is wonderfully self-aware and extremely descriptive. One of her best qualities as a writer is the ability to connect her individual experiences with familiar archtypes, as well as with each other. In talking about her brothers, she says, "As we've gotten older, and Father's beatings have become more frequent, their [her brothers] blackness has finally united them. They are the outsiders, the basement-dwellers, Mother's failed mission to Afrrica. The black boys who get whipped by the white master."

Later in the book, I caught her describing her life at church with a similar theme: "When I was in grade school, I wanted to be an usher like my brothers but was sent downstairs to the nursery instead. That's where the women work, in the basement--changing diapers, organizing potlucks and teaching sunday school. In the basement, out of sight."

The second half of the book is where her story really gets strange. Scheeres' brother David is sent to a Christian reform school/boot camp in the Dominican Republic called Escuela Caribe and she soon follows. What she finds there (understandably missing from David's censored letters) is a nightmarish caste system coupled with ridicule, manual labor and physical abuse. She is able to outsmart the system over time, but her time spent there (over a year) is fascinatingly horrible. I had no idea that environments like this even existed today.

As she says upon arriving, "I want to focus on my misery. I want to roll around in it like a dog in a pile of shit. I want to claim it as my own. Right now, it's all I have. I still can't believe that a place like Escuela Caribe exists, and that I find myself enrolled in it."

Despite the many hardships she faced growing up, her tone is never one of martyrdom or self-pity. The story is more of a confession or a therapeutic exercise than it is a purposeful indictment of Midwest Christianity. Scheeres says she wrote the book to honor her relationship with her brother. However, it is nearly impossible to read this book without forming a critical opinion of (at the very least) the fundamental Christianity that her parents followed and that spawned Escuela Caribe. I see this book both as a memoir as well as the work of an activist.

A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini

This book, by the same author as The Kite Runner, caught my eye several months before it was published. Sara Coe gave it to me on my birthday; Web had bought me a copy that day too in case nobody else gave it to me. I really enjoyed the book, probably as much as Kite Runner, although the plot was more predictable.

The story follows an unusual friendship between Mariam and Laila, two women living in Afghanistan from before the Russian occupation through today. The narrative follows them through their early lives as brides through child-rearing and into middle age. It was interesting to read about women this time (in contrast to in Kite Runner) and compare it to other books I had read recently on women in Muslim countries. Life changed drastically for women during the 30 or so years during which this book is set, and I learned a lot about Afghan history. I also enjoyed the contrast between the two women: Mariam, raised poor, ending up obedient and bitter, and Laila, raised in a more reasonable household, always hopeful and deceptive.

In some places, the description of women and their struggles was striking, like in this scene from a hospital:

"They want us to operate in burqas." the doctor explained, motioning with her head to the nurse at the door. "She keeps watch. She sees them coming; I cover."

She said this in a pragmatic, almost indifferent, tone, and Mariam understood that this was a women far past outrage. Here was a woman, she thought , who had understood that she was lucky to even be working, that there was always something, something else, that they could take away.

However, in other parts of the book, the voice that Hosseini gives Mariam sounded a little preachy to me. "And the burqa, she leaned to her surprise, was also comforting. It was like a one-way window. Inside it, she was an observer, buffered from the scrutinizing eyes of strangers. She no longer worried that people knew, with a single glance, all the shameful secrets of her past." I couldn't tell if it was his being a man writing a woman's character, his desire to defend some parts of Islam, or just bad writing.

Plenty of the book, however, was good writing. Mariam grows up as the illegitimate child of a local aristocrat, and she is abruptly married off when her mother dies. Hossieni's descriptions of her confusion in growing up were brilliant. He writes in her voice: "Husbands who doted on their mothers and wouldn't spend a rupiah on them, the wives. Husbands who gambled. Mariam wondered how so many women could suffer the same miserable luck, to have married, all of them, such dreadful men. Or was this a wifely game that she did not know about, a daily ritual, like soaking rice or making dough? Would the expect her soon to join in?"

Overall, I'd recommend this book. It had some great descriptions and unusual scenes which I'm sure I'll confuse with movie scenes over time. I also enjoyed learning more about Afghanistan given how much attention it has received in the media since 9/11.

Eventide by Ken Haruf

I had been saving this sequel to Plainsong for as long as I could, but in need of a pick-me-up book this weekend I finally succumbed. Eventide was good not only of its own accord but also because it reminded me how much I liked Plainsong.

This book is a continuation of the story begun in Plainsong. The book also uses many of the same literary affectations as its predecessor: conversations without quotation marks and local grammar in non-conversation descriptions. "First they set to cleaning it, as people do when they move into a new house." This made the book immediately familiar to me, despite having read probably 40+ books since Plainsong.

One of the best things about Plainsong was the surprising connections between seemingly disparate characters within the story. Prepared for this, I kept trying to figure out who would end up living with or helping out whom in Eventide, but to no avail. Thankfully, Haruf made similarly clever connections between the characters that surprised me at every turn of the page. The characters were interesting to follow, well-developed, and appropriately likable or hate-able. Their tragedies and mistakes felt like my own.

Towards the end of this book, I noticed that I was reconsidering my superiority as a capuccino-drinking therapy-going, Tivo-using blue-stater. The characters in this book (no doubt based on people Haruf has come across in his native Colorad0) are at least as good as my contemporaries are in solving problems and comforting each other. I yearned, briefly, for a simpler life in a small town.

Perhaps my only disappointment with this book was that it was exactly as good as Plainsong, for all the same reasons.

Sweetness in the Belly by Camilla Gibb

I had a hard time putting this book down. On Saturday, I was trying not to read it too fast, so I would read a chapter, then look something historical up in Wikipedia and force myself to spend 10 minutes learning before going to the next chapter. It is the first book taking place in a foreign country that I've read in a while, and I loved that feeling of being transported.

This book is about a woman who (as a small child) is left by her British-born bohemian parents at a Sufi shrine in Morocco for a long weekend. They die that weekend, and she ends up converting to Islam and making a pilgrimage to Ethiopia as a young woman. The political unrest in Ethiopia sends her to London, and the bulk of the book alternates between these two locations and times in her life.

The book's main theme was identity. As a British-born woman in an Islamic society, Lilly did not fit in; nor did she fit in returning to London after that experience. She is a strong, independent woman, but as the book continues and the places where she finds comfort are threatened, she hardens on the outside. Lilly is a very likable character, but one who seems distant; I believe that distance is purposeful, not an indication of bad writing.

I learned a lot about Ethiopian history and culture, as well as Islam, neither of which I was expecting. For me, Ethiopia was always a country that (a) also used to comprise Eritrea, (b) spawned some good restaurants in the States where you ate without your hands, and (c) had a famine that prompted the original We Are the World or something. I am much better educated now, although I didn't find any of those things to be untrue.

If I have any criticism of this book, it's that in what I perceive to be an effort to describe Islam as having incarnations that are kind and joyful (not terrorist fodder), Gibb gets a little preachy and long-winded through Lilly. I think it's great that the literary community is trying to support a wider worldview of, among other things, Islam, and that's one of the reasons I love reading so much. But, a few of Lilly's comments about Islam were less about telling a story or developing a character and more about defending it to its critics.

That aside, there was some excellent writing in the book. At a social gathering, Lilly notices she is being spoken to in English, not the native language: "It's okay, I wanted to tell them, I even dream in Harari now. And Harari dreams are not like Arabic or English dreams: there are always a great many more people involved."

And Gibb makes some larger points through Lilly as well: "Once you step inside, history has to be rewritten to include you. A fiction develops, a story that weaves you into the social fabric, giving you roots and a local identity. You are assimilated, and in erasing your differences and making you one of their own, the community can maintain belief in its wholeness and purity. After two or three generations, nobody remembers the story is fiction. It has become fact. And this is how history is made."

Definitely recommended, this book will open your mind.